CHAPTER VI.
FOR EVERMORE.
After her return from Hastings, Heather lost no time in taking Lally and Mr. Stewart’s letter to Mr. Rymner Henry.
That great man did not pay quite such devoted attention to his new patient as Doctor Chickton had considered necessary; on the contrary, Mrs. Dudley thought him a little negligent. He asked few questions; he did not “take much notice” of the child; he was a little stand-off and ceremonious; he was at no pains to win Lally’s heart. He expressed no opinion on the case, and declined to say how long he thought it might be before she was well.
The proximate cause of her delicacy did not appear to interest him as it had done Dr. Chickton. As a narrative, Heather’s story might have its merits, so his manner seemed to imply; but, in so far as it afforded the slightest assistance to his comprehension of the disease, she might have spared herself the trouble of repeating it.
He wrote a prescription, against his will, Heather imagined, and then he rose, signifying thereby that the interview was terminated.
“What do you think of her?” Mrs. Dudley ventured to inquire, as she laid the fee wrapped up like the curl of which Mr. Stewart had spoken, in a piece of note-paper on the table, guiltily, and as if she had committed a sin, “what do you think of her?”
“I should like to look at her again,” said Mr. Henry. “No, you need not bring her here; I will call some day when I am in your neighbourhood. Have you seen Mr. Stewart lately?”
“Last week,” Heather answered.
“Was he quite well? Ah! glad to hear that; wonderful man; astonishing energy; wonderful—wonderful!” and, amidst these exclamations, Mr. Henry cleverly manœuvred his visitors to the door of his consulting-room, where he consigned them to the care of an individual who, although he demeaned himself like an archbishop, and looked like a master undertaker, was yet kind enough to see Mrs. Dudley into her cab, and tell the driver to return to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Before Heather expected him to do so, Mr. Rymner Henry called. In her drawing-room, he seemed a very different individual to the Mr. Henry who had been so stiff and so stand-off in his own domains.
He talked a good deal to Mrs. Dudley, and some amenities were exchanged between him and Lally, who preferred a petition on her own account against any more medicine, “for I am well now,” she assured him, “better as well.”
“What does she mean by that expression?” inquired Mr. Henry.
“Better than well, I imagine,” Heather explained. “I do not know where she heard the phrase, but she adopted it during her first severe illness, and has since continued to use it.”
“And you think you are too well to require medicine?” he added, addressing the child.
“Iss.” Lally’s speaking was still, as Mrs. Ormson declared, in a deplorably backward condition.
“But if you do not take the medicine I order, you may get ill again.”
Lally turned this view of the question over in her mind, and then remarked, “it would be time enough to have the medicine when she did get ill again.”
“Your mamma does not think so.”
“But then ma has not to take it.”
“Your mamma would not object to taking anything I ordered, if she thought that would cure her little girl,”—at which remark Heather held out her arms to Lally, and the mother and child went through one of those pantomimes which supply the place of all assurance, as they elude all description.
Inexpressibly touching, too, become such pantomimes when the spectator knows the time during which they can be repeated is but short; when he is quite well aware that the days are drawing near on which the child so loved, so idolized, must be laid in the arms of a colder and grimmer nurse to be caressed and hushed to sleep, and pressed close to her mother’s breast, never more, ah! never.
And of this fact Mr. Henry was only too confident. The moment he looked in Lally’s face, he knew for a certainty that which Mr. Stewart had vaguely comprehended. The temporary improvement Heather talked of so thankfully, could not deceive his experience. He understood the nature of such varieties too well to be deceived by them; he knew Lally was doomed, and the bright sunny November day, spite of all its delusive light and glitter, could not blind him to the fact that winter was close at hand.
For which reason he wished Mr. Stewart had not sent Mrs. Dudley to him. He was not a man to delude with false hopes such as Dr. Chickton had held out, and yet to tell this fond, foolish mother that it was a mere question of time and cure, was beyond his ability.
To refuse to treat the hopeless case, to decline ordering vain remedies, would have been almost barbarous, when the poor creature apparently believed the very strength and might of her own love could save her darling from the grasp of a foe too terrible to mention.
“It will dawn upon her by degrees,” the surgeon thought, “there is no need for me to tell her;” and so, after a few minutes’ more conversation, he departed, utterly ignoring the fee which Heather would have pressed upon him. He would not see, or feel, or take it; and when at length he could not avoid noticing the shy, puzzled look in her face, he said,—
“I do not come professionally, you know; I shall only call when I am in your neighbourhood, and have a quarter of an hour to spare. Good morning!” and he was off, leaving Heather much surprised, and perhaps, also, a little vexed.
For it occurred to her Mr. Stewart must have arranged to pay Mr. Henry for his services. After her experience of Dr. Chickton, and his guinea a week, she never imagined any one would take the trouble of attending even Lally gratuitously.
The child might be, as Dr. Chickton had remarked, one of the most interesting little creatures he ever beheld; but even supposing Mr. Henry to be of the same opinion (and Heather with all her maternal vanity and affection could not persuade herself the surgeon was anything of the kind), still that opinion need not prevent his taking a fee, since it had not produced a similarly deterrent effect on Dr. Chickton.
Altogether, Mrs. Dudley thought she would write to Mr. Stewart on the subject; and, while expressing her obligations for his intended kindness, assure him he was depriving her of a pleasure in not suffering her to pay for anything which might hasten Lally’s recovery.
She told him, truthfully enough, God knows, she would rather save and economize in every possible way, than that Lally should want for the best help money could procure. She said, what also she believed to be a literal fact, that her husband was perfectly well able to afford Mr. Henry’s fees; and she entreated him to allow her to send him whatever sum he had placed in his friend’s hands for attending Lally.
And then, almost against her will, but still of necessity, because it was not in her nature to be abrupt or ungracious, she added some words of gratitude for all his kindness to her little girl, and “remained his sincerely,—H. Dudley.”
She would not sign herself “Heather,” lest the name should attract his attention, and Mr. Stewart noticed the omission. He knew enough of women to be aware that, when possessed of a pretty or uncommon name, they always write it in full, and he liked Mrs. Dudley too much to believe for a moment she was superior to the little foibles and weaknesses of her sex.
“She is a good girl,” he thought, as he replaced her note in its envelope; “I wish she had married any other man than Dudley;” after which mental remark he wrote her a few lines, saying she was quite mistaken in her idea, “that he had not mentioned the question of money in any way to Mr. Henry, and explained that, very possibly, if fees were forced upon his acceptance, the surgeon might feel a delicacy in seeing Lally so frequently as the child’s state of health required. Mr. Stewart added, he trusted he should on his return to town (the letter was dated from Careyby Castle) hear a good account of his little friend.”
But, long before Mr. Stewart’s return to London, the temporary improvement in Lally gave place to increased weariness, to weakness worse than pain, to peevish complainings of “being tired, ma, tired;” and then, in despair, Heather looked upon Mr. Henry’s now frequent visits as matters of course, and began to watch his face and ponder his words anxiously and fearfully.
She did not know exactly what she dreaded; she could not bear to put it to her own soul that Lally was in danger—that Lally was incurable.
She would sit and think, poor weak heart, of those bright sunshiny days at Hastings, when the progress of her child’s disease had stood still, when it even seemed to retrograde and allowed her to play on the sands, and pick up shells among the shingle, and run screaming with delight over the grass; and while she thought, she would persuade herself that change was all Lally needed, that health resided wholly out of town, and sickness solely amongst the wilderness of houses, the labyrinth of streets. That brief reprieve made the subsequent relapse seem all the harder to endure patiently; it was like the hope of a fortune held out to a beggar and then withdrawn, only to plunge him into a deeper and blacker poverty than before.
Against her own fears, Heather fought madly; she could not endure that any one should say Lally looked ill, that Lally grew thinner; she could not bear that Lally herself should complain of weariness. Her love made her at times seem almost harsh; her passionate struggle with the dread which would not now be refused entrance, made her fiercely deny the existence of danger. That which had at one time only caused her anxiety, now rendered her nearly frantic. She grew irritable and impatient. The sweet repose of old, gave place to a constant desire to be up and doing. Could Mr. Henry give Lally no different medicine? should he advise taking her away? Mr. Dudley’s aunt was wintering in the south of France, might it not be better to try a total change of climate? She would go with her, if Mr. Henry thought a different air would restore her strength; but Mr. Henry declined to recommend travelling at such a season. He said the child was better at home; better in that warm town house, with every comfort around her, than she could possibly be elsewhere. And thus things went on, till at length Lally had to be carried up and downstairs, and lay most of the day on a sofa, drawn close beside one of the drawing-room windows, from which she could look out over the Square.
Even then Heather would not despair; she thought when once the spring came, Lally was certain to get better; she was always saying, that the moment mild weather arrived she must take her child to the sea-side, and the pair never wearied of planning the journey, of picturing the waves rippling in upon the shore, of gathering, in imagination, shells and pebbles and weed; of fancying how pleasant it would be to see the sun shining upon the waters, as they used to do—as they used—ah! Heaven.
Once again Lally took up her former cry of “Will it be spring soon, mamma? Will it be spring before very long?” And she would repeat the same inquiry to Mr. Henry, with the addition of—“And when the spring comes, shall I be well?”
The first time she put this question, Heather looked swiftly and sharply towards the surgeon, but she could read nothing from his face.
“Well,” he repeated, “are you not well now?”
“No;” and the poor little head was shaken in confirmation of this hopeless negative.
“Tell me where you feel ill,” he said; but Lally was incapable of this descriptive flight.
“Has she pain?” he asked; and Mrs. Dudley answered, “Very rarely.”
She would have liked Mr. Henry to pursue the subject and investigate it more thoroughly, but instead of doing so, the surgeon only took up one of Lally’s hands, and looked at it absently.
He knew, and had always known, that the malady which was on the child, his skill, great though it might be, could never cure. He knew the disease she had in her, call it by what other technical name his profession might, was, in plain English, Death; and the man who shall discover a cure for that complaint has yet to be born.
He knew her body would grow more feeble, her limbs more easily tired, her poor pinched little face more pinched as the days went by.
He knew, that in the whole of the pharmacopœia, there was not a drug which might give her even a chance of life. He knew this, he had always known it; and yet he could not bring himself to tell Heather the naked truth. He saw the woman’s heart was bound up in her child; he guessed, perhaps, that her husband was not likely to be much stay or comfort to her when the hour of trial came; and yet, at length, he decided to speak to Arthur, to tell him his little girl was dangerously ill—ill past all hope of recovery.
Which, of course, when communicated to him, Arthur did not believe. He sent for further advice—for lying prophets, who spoke of healing when there was no chance of healing; and softly descended the staircase, whispering peace in a house where there could be no peace.
And yet, what need was there for them to be cruelly conscientious—unmercifully truthful? If their words broke the force of the descending blow, kept it suspended in Heather’s sight, without absolutely crushing her heart, who may say that their subterfuges were wrong—their suggestions useless?
The evil days when no telling should be required, were drawing very nigh; and there was no one, save Arthur, who remained quite blind to their approach.
He had always preferred to ignore facts, if there were any treacherous, illusive, pleasant hope that his feeble nature could clutch. He was not one likely to believe there was any actual danger to be apprehended, so long as he could pay the veriest quack to come and tell him the child’s life might be saved. He hearkened to Mrs. Croft, when she assured him all mothers were alike—so easily frightened, so over-anxious, so wearisomely careful about their petted darlings. Scoffingly, almost, she would declare, that but for these “women’s fancies” doctors never could earn a living; and she insinuated that, so long as fees were to be had, it was not likely they would pronounce Lally convalescent.
Possibly, she did not herself believe the child’s life was in absolute danger; but she did know, not merely that Lally was very ill, but that, by keeping Arthur so much from home, she was infusing another drop of bitterness into Heather’s cup.
Had Mrs. Dudley remonstrated on the subject, which she felt far too weary and broken-spirited to attempt, there can be little question but that Mrs. Croft would have retorted, she, at all events, had no right to complain, “considering my husband is continually in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” which was true, though, certainly, Heather could not be accused of encouraging his visits.
Five times out of six she was “not at home,” and yet he haunted the house. He never seemed tired of bringing little luxuries for Lally. The fruit he procured moistened the parched lips; the flowers he sent lay on her pillow; the oldest wine in his cellars, the choicest grapes from his uncle’s forcing-houses at Layford, found their way to the sick room, which Lally now never left.
He was fond of children, this man who was childless, and Lally had twined herself into his affections. He would have done anything to save her, and he importuned Mr. Henry about Lally till that great man became perfectly sick of the sight of his old friend’s nephew.
Well, it was down a lane bordered by roses she went to her long home; soft hands tended her; a loving breast pillowed her; friends bore her company sorrowfully while she glided—glided adown that road, the descent in which is, towards the last, so steep and sudden.
Even Heather was deceived concerning the end, which drew nearer day by day, and hour by hour.
It was so gradual, no one could say when the change came—no one could tell exactly when Hope finally left the house, closing the door behind her. No one could remember when the child ceased to make lamentations concerning her own sickness, and grew patient; no one could quite recollect when it was every person about the house, save Arthur, commenced to realise that Lally—the little Lally of a happier time—might never roam again with tireless feet from parlour to dairy, from garden to paddock, of that old home which they seemed to have left so long and long ago.
There was very bitter sorrow in that London house; to their business Alick and Cuthbert went daily with hearts which were heavy with grief for the little plaything about to be taken from them for ever; the girls up from Hertfordshire could not settle to their usual occupations, but wandered idly and purposelessly about the house; the servants crept to their work, feeling the burden of a great trouble oppressing them. Mrs. Piggott could neither rest nor eat, and Priscilla Dobbin’s eyes were constantly so red that Harry Marsden’s remark concerning them was no longer applicable. Ned took a dreary holiday to come and have a look at “Missie,” but had to beat a hasty retreat downstairs, where he sat in the kitchen and cried like a child; but still death was slow about coming; and still Heather kept her weary vigils, and still Arthur would not comprehend.
One evening, utterly exhausted, she had thrown herself on the sofa, leaving Agnes to keep watch beside Lally, when the man who acted as messenger to the company and footman to the Dudleys, entered the room, where no candles were lighted, and nothing dispelled the gloom except the fire burning not over brightly, to inform Heather—
“A young person wished to speak to her.”
“I cannot see any one,” Mrs. Dudley replied.
“I told her you could not, ma’am,” the man replied. He was a very magnificent individual, who impressed shareholders wonderfully, and certainly considered himself a much more important personage than the secretary; yet, notwithstanding his superiority over every one else connected with the “Protector,” he had always been graciously affable towards Mrs. Dudley, and now, in her trouble, he felt very sorry for her indeed. He had children of his own, so he informed Mrs. Piggott, and “knew what it was;” whereupon he had taken upon himself to assure the stranger Mrs. Dudley could not possibly be disturbed, and that he should decline delivering any message whatever to her.
But the “young person” had been importunate—she had resolutely refused to take “no” for an answer—and she so persistently insisted on a note she produced being given to Mrs. Dudley, that Tifford at length wavered.
“If you give her that note,” the stranger asserted, “she will see me; and if you do not give it to her, she will be sorry hereafter to know it was kept from her. I will wait outside till she has read it.” And so saying, she coolly stepped out into the night through the open hall-door, whereat she had found Mr. Tifford meditating, in the midst of a silence which seemed, no doubt, to him, as great as that Harvey found amongst the tombs.
Frequently, Mr. Tifford declared Lincoln’s Inn Fields was as lively as a churchyard; and, at the precise moment the young woman came up and accosted him, he was thinking he might as well be buried alive as shut up there.
“You can close the door,” she remarked, noticing his hesitation; whereupon Mr. Tifford at once invited her to “step inside” and sit down, while he went upstairs to his mistress.
The stranger stepped inside as permitted, but did not sit down; she stood on the mat, with her shawl wrapped tightly around her and her thick veil tied close under her chin, until Tifford returning bade her follow him upstairs.
He ushered her into the dim drawing-room, and then shut the door.
By the hearth stood Mrs. Dudley.
“You bring me news,” she said, “of——” But before she could finish her sentence the stranger advanced out of the gloom, and flinging herself on Heather’s neck, broke out into a passion of weeping. It was the wanderer come home at last!—it was Bessie, so long mourned, so long looked for, restored at an hour when her advent was least expected.
To Heather it seemed almost as though one had been given back to her from the grave, and for a moment she drew out of it a vague augury of recovery for Lally.
“Bessie! Bessie!” she exclaimed, clasping the girl to her heart; “Bessie—dear Bessie!” And then there were kisses, and sobs, and low-murmured exclamations; they could not ask questions, they were so moved—they could not talk, for very excess of thronging words—they could not speak, because they had so much to say.
At length they stepped back a pace or two, so that each might look in her friend’s face.
They had been parted little more than a year, and yet how changed were both!
“You have suffered, Heather,” Bessie said; and then she took the dear face between her hands and turned it so that the firelight might fall upon it.
“Yes—Lally,” the other answered, and her tears began to flow once more.
“It was hearing about her brought me to you. I must see her, Heather, though she has forgotten me, of course.”
“If she have, it must be very recently,” was the reply. “How did you hear of her illness?”
“From Ned,” Bessie answered: “I did not know anything about your having left the Hollow, and went there, hoping to be able to see and speak to you alone, but I found the place deserted—oh, it did not seem like Berrie Down any longer!—and then Ned told me Lally was very ill. So, as I could not rest without looking in my child’s face—she was almost mine, Heather——”
With a sob, Bessie broke off. The past came back to her as she spoke—the past, with its sunshine, its purity, its peace. She thought of the evening Heather returned from London—the evening when this poor story opened—when she and the child sat upon the grass dividing their bonbons, and a glory lay over the landscape—a glory wrought out of the beams of the setting sun which sank to rest as she and Heather walked slowly towards the house, talking of Gilbert Harcourt and her own future. Counted by time, that evening did not lie so very far back in the past—but computed by events, it seemed to Bessie as though half a lifetime had come and gone since then.
It was like looking back to childhood from the confines of middle age; it was like recalling one’s youth when tottering feebly to the grave. It was so far away, and yet so near. It was as though for years and years she had been climbing to the summit of some steep hill, till suddenly she reached a point where she was able to pause and glance behind, and from whence she could see close to her, and yet separated by all that lapse of time, by all the toil and labour of the ascent, the happy valley she had left. There, steeped in the sunshine of old, were spread out before her the plains of her earthly heaven. Once again she felt the breath of the sweet west wind upon her cheek; she beheld the westeria with its wealth of leaves; she saw the windows of those pleasant rooms wreathed with roses, festooned with honeysuckles. There was a great peace in the air, and the woman whose face had the sad forecasting expression walked beside her over the sward.
There had been a little jealousy between them then; but that was gone and past—passed like winter’s frosts, melted like December’s snow.
And this was how they met once more, with the child dear to both of them so ill, that, had Bessie returned but a few hours later, she might never have looked upon her living again.
Quietly they passed upstairs together; with silent feet they entered the room where Lally lay, with Agnes still keeping watch beside her.
Heather, as they drew near the bed, put her finger to her lips, as a warning for Agnes to utter no exclamation of surprise.
“I do not want any one to know I am here,” Bessie whispered in her ear; “but I could not rest without seeing her. How is she now?”
“Very quiet,” Agnes answered.
Very quiet. Yes, too quiet, Bessie thought, as she bent over the child, for the great change to be far distant. Very quiet. Oh, woe! that the little busy feet should ever have grown so idle—that the restless body should ever have become so still!
Very quiet—too quiet, for Bessie had to stoop down to hear if she still breathed. Quiet with the skin drawn tight over her face; with her hair, damp and thin, pushed back from her forehead; with her poor hands, which were now but skin and bone, lying listlessly out upon the coverlet, with her eyes closed and the fringed lashes sweeping her cheek; with her mouth parted a little, Lally was indeed at last very quiet—quiet enough to have contented any one who had ever thought her too full of health, and mirth, and spirits.
Silently Agnes gave place to Bessie. She took her shawl away, and removed her bonnet, and carried them to a distant sofa. With a glance Bessie thanked her, and then she turned to the child again—her child—whom she had loved, petted, scolded, kissed, and teazed in the bright summer weather, and loved, and nursed, and tended, and left when the holly berries were shining above the little bed—her child of whom she had been so fond—her child who had been so fond of her, who had made such moan for Bessie, and yet who had now too nearly done with this world’s loves and pleasures to be told her old playmate was returned and standing close beside her.
There was a great silence in the room. Upon the threshold stood the universal Conqueror, and already the child felt the chilling influence of his presence. With her hand clasped in Bessie’s the mother sat watching; with her head resting on the pillow Bessie looked at Lally, never removing her eyes from the child’s face.
On the other side of the bed stood Agnes, leaning against the wall, weary and faint; but there was no sound of weeping in the apartment; they would not sob, they would not make lamentation to vex or disturb the spirit hovering on the dark shores of Eternity’s mighty ocean.
They hushed their grief, and they bowed their heads in silent prayer, and the rustle of the angel’s wings—the angel who was come to fetch their darling—might almost have been heard through the stillness which abode in the room.
All at once Bessie rose, and passing round the bed, asked Agnes in a whisper,—
“Where is Arthur?”
“At Mr. Crofts’,” was the reply.
“Send for him,” said Bessie, and Agnes left the room.
After a while the rest of the family came in one by one—Alick and Cuthbert, Lucy and Laura, and the servants, Mrs. Piggott, and Prissy, and Jane; but when the silence was thus broken, the child grew restless, and then Heather motioned them to go—all save Agnes, and Bessie, who, crouched up in a dark corner, escaped observation. Time passed by, and still there came no tidings of Arthur. Once again Bessie spoke to Agnes, and again Agnes went softly downstairs; when she returned, she whispered that Alick was gone to fetch his brother.
With her anxious eyes Heather followed every movement of the pair, and at length she asked Bessie—“Is it so near?”
A silent pressure of her hand was Bessie’s only answer.
“Would you send some one for Mr. Henry?” the poor mother whispered.
“My darling, what good can he do?” Bessie inquired; but Cuthbert was despatched for him, nevertheless.
Before many minutes more, however, had elapsed, the child began to move from side to side, and talk wanderingly. She moaned gently, and tried to raise herself in bed. Agnes put her arm behind the pillow, and lifted her a little. Involuntarily Heather and Bessie stood up, as though they heard and felt something approaching, and the former murmured in the very extremity of her anguish, “My child—my child!”
“Don’t, Heather—don’t?” Bessie said, in an agony of entreaty.
At sound of her voice, Lally opened her eyes wide and looked on the speaker with an expression of recognition.
Almost immediately her moaning ceased, her restlessness subsided; there came a glimmer into her face of remembrance, and a smile—a very ghost of the old whimsical smile—played about her lips as she stretched out her little arms and said,—
“Bessie carry me down among the blackberries, and cover me with leaves?”
Oh Lord! in the days when that was their pastime, who would have dreamed of so pitiful an ending to the short story!
For a moment, for her—for the child—no doubt the chamber was flooded with golden sunbeams—without question she saw the landscape lying still and tranquil in the clear, calm, bright light of those summer evenings which had been so happy and so glad.
She beheld the trees gently waving their branches in the soft breeze; she heard the light stirring of the wind amongst the foliage; she saw the lawn sloping away to the Hollow, the sheep dotting the fields beyond; she was in her home—her own very home—as she had often called it; the past was present with her once again, and Bessie stood beside her on the smooth green turf.
The mortal sickness was gone; the months of feeble health were wiped out; the limbs felt tireless as of old; pain was to her an unknown experience, weakness a thing she had never felt; she was lithe, and active, and strong; restless and insatiable for movement, as ever; the game they had played at so often was to be played once more; adown the slope they were to go, swift, and happy, and free; adown the slope, over the grass, under the trees, into the Hollow, among the blackberry bushes, and then——
Bessie lifted the child, and laying her in her mother’s arms, said, “Take her, Heather.”
That was all—a moment after in this world there was no Lally, she had passed to the Eternal Shore.
Ah me! ah me! who in the days not so very long departed would ever have thought that the little comedy of Lally’s life should come to hold within it so bitter a tragedy for Heather; who would ever have fancied that the fair freckled face should wear so worn and wasted a look, that the little hands should be crossed and lie so motionless upon her breast, that the eyes should never sparkle with glee nor fill with tears again, that the sound of her laugh should never be heard more?
No more, no more! it all came to Heather’s mind as she laid her first-born on the bed—dead. No more, no more! and then the torrent of her grief, like a tide which has for a brief period been kept back by a feeble barrier, broke bounds and swept everything before it in a resistless flood.
No more, no more! never to part the laurels again and peep forth from amongst the green leaves gleefully, never to stand amidst the flowers, with her little frock held up to receive the buds Bessie showered into it, never to sit with Muff in her lap, never to kneel on the sward hugging Nep’s great head, never to be in and out, out and in, never to go to the sea-side as they had pictured, and gather shell, and weed, and pebble, never to see the spring come round again, and the primroses dot the copse. No more—no more!
Never more either to grow older and to change, never to be a grown-up daughter, never to be taught anything, never to alter, never to be either sorrow or comfort, curse or blessing in the future, never to have a bitter memory attached to her; always to be “little Lally,” always to be a child.
In the future there came consolation to the mother from this thought, but that future was far off in the hour when she knelt beside the bed weeping as though her very heart would break.
Somehow they got her out of the room, and Agnes stayed with Heather while Bessie dressed “her child” for the last time, and left her, a smile still hovering on her lips, to sleep the soundest sleep even Lally had ever known.
Stealing softly down the stairs Bessie met Arthur. She had her bonnet on and veil down, so as she stood aside on one of the landings to let him pass, he did so without recognising her.
The man was white as his dead child, and trembling like a leaf.
He had come too late! there was no Lally now in the silent room; there would be no Lally in any room which his feet might enter for evermore.