Margaret Oliphant - The Sorceress. Volume 2 of 3

“We haven’t been – so religious, my dear, as perhaps we ought,” stammered the anxious man. “If I sent for – Mr. Baldwin perhaps, to read the prayers for the sick and – and talk to you a little?”

She looked at him with some wonder for a moment, and then she said, with a smile, “Yes, yes; by all means, Edward, if you like it.”

“I shall certainly like it, my dearest; and it is right – it is what we should all wish to do at the – ” He could not say at the last – he could not say when we are dying – it was too much for him; but certainly she must understand now. And he went away hurriedly to call the clergyman, that no more time might be lost.

“Moulsey,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “have we come then quite – to the end now?”

“Oh, ma’am! Oh, my dear lady!” Moulsey said.

“My husband – seems to think so. It is a little hard – to leave them all. Where is Bee?”

“I am here, mamma,” said a broken voice; and the mother’s hand was caught and held tight, as she liked it to be. “May Betty come too?”

“Yes, let Betty come. It is you I want, not Mr. Baldwin.”

“Mr. Baldwin is a good man, ma’am. He’ll be a comfort to them and to the Colonel.”

“Yes, I suppose so; he will be a comfort to – your father. But I don’t want anyone. I haven’t done very much harm – ”

“No! oh, no, ma’am, none!” said Moulsey, while Betty, thrown on her knees by the bedside, tried to smother her sobs; and Bee, worn out and feeling as if she felt nothing, sat and held her mother’s hand.

“But, then,” she said, “I’ve never, never, done any good.”

“Oh! my dear lady, my dear lady! And all the poor people, and all the children.”

“Hush! Moulsey. I never gave anything – not a bit of bread, not a shilling – but because I liked to do it. Never! oh, never from any good motive. I always liked to do it. It was my pleasure. It never cost me anything. I have done no good in my life. I just liked the poor children, that was all, and thought if they were my own – Oh, Bee and Betty, try to be better women – different from me.”

Betty, who was so young, crept nearer and nearer on her knees, till she came to the head of the bed. She lifted up her tear-stained face, “Mother! oh, mother! are you frightened?” she cried.

Mrs. Kingsward put forth her other arm and put it freely round the weeping girl. “Perhaps I ought to be, perhaps I ought to be!” she said, with a little thrill and quaver.

“Mother,” said Betty, pushing closer and closer, almost pushing Bee away, “if I had been wicked, ever so wicked, I shouldn’t be frightened for you.”

A heavenly smile came over the woman’s face. “I should think not, indeed.”

And then Betty, in the silence of the room, put her hands together and said very softly, “Our Father, which art in Heaven – ”

“Oh, children, children,” cried Moulsey, “don’t break our hearts! She’s too weak to bear it. Leave her alone.”

“Yes, go away, children dear – go away. I have to rest – to see Mr. Baldwin.” Then she smiled, and said in gasps, “To tell the truth – I’m – I’m not afraid; look – ” She pointed to the picture by her bedside. “So easy – so easy! Just resting – and the Saviour will put out his hand and take me in.”

Mr. Baldwin came soon after – the good Rector, who was a good man, but who believed he had the keys, and that what he bound on earth was bound in Heaven – or, at least, he thought he believed so – with Colonel Kingsward, who felt that he was thus fulfilling all righteousness, and that this was the proper way in which to approach the everlasting doors. He put away the little picture in which Catherine of Siena lay in the hold of the angels, in the perfect peace of life accomplished, the rest that was so easy and so sweet – hastily with displeasure and contempt. He did not wish the Rector to see the childish thing in which his wife had taken pleasure, nor even that she had been taking pleasure at all at such a solemn moment; even that she should smile the same smile of welcome with which she would have greeted her kind neighbour had she been in her usual place in the drawing-room disturbed her husband. So near death and yet able to think of that! He watched her face as the Rector read the usual prayers. Did she enter into them – did she understand them? He could scarcely join in them himself in his anxiety to make sure that she felt and knew what was her “state,” and was preparing – preparing to meet her God. That God was awaiting severely the appearance of that soul before him, the Colonel could not but feel. He would not have said so in words, but the instinctive conviction in his heart was so. When she looked round for the little picture it hurt him like a sting. Oh, if she would but think of the things that concerned her peace – not of follies, childish distractions, amusements for the fancy. On her side, the poor lady was conscious more or less of all that was going on, understood here and there the prayers that were going over her head, prayers of others for her, rather than anything to be said by herself. In the midst of them, she felt herself already like St. Catherine, floating away into ineffable peace, then coming back again to hear the sacred words, to see the little circle round her on their knees, and to smile upon them in an utter calm of weakness without pain, feeling only that they were good to her, thinking of her, which was sweet, but knowing little more.

It was the most serene and cloudless night after that terrible day. A little after Colonel Kingsward had left the room finally and shut himself up in his study, Moulsey took the two girls out into the garden, through a window which opened upon it. “Children, go and breathe the sweet air. I’ll not have you in a room to break your hearts. Look up yonder – yonder where she’s gone,” said the kind nurse who had done everything for their mother. And they stole out – the two little ghosts, overborne with the dreadful burden of humanity, the burden which none of us can shake off, and crept across the grass to the seat where she had been used to sit among the children. The night was peace itself – not a breath stirring, a young moon with something wistful in her light looking down, making the garden bright as with a softened ethereal day. A line of white cloud dimly detached from the softness of the blue lay far off towards the west amid the radiance, a long faint line as of something in the far distance. Bee and Betty stood and gazed at it with eyes and hearts over-charged, each leaning upon the other. Their young souls were touched with awe and an awful quiet. They were too near the departure to have fallen down as yet into the vacancy and emptiness of re-awakening life. “Oh,” they said, “if that should be her!” And why should it not be? Unless perhaps there was a quicker way. They watched it with that sob in the throat which is of all sounds and sensations the most overwhelming. It seemed to them as if they were watching her a little further on her way, to the very horizon, till the soft distance closed over, and that speck like a sail upon the sea could be seen no more. And when it was gone they sank down together upon her seat, under the trees she loved, where the children had played and tumbled on the grass about her, and talked of her in broken words, a little phrase now and then, sometimes only “Mother,” or “Oh, mamma, mamma,” now from one, now from another – in that first extraordinary exaltation and anguish which is not yet grief.

They did not know how long they had been there when something stirred in the bushes, and the two big boys, Arthur and Fred, came heavily into sight, holding each other by the arm. The boys were bewildered, heavy and miserable, not knowing what to do with themselves nor where to go. But they came up with a purpose, which was a little ease in the trouble. It cost them a little convulsion of reluctant crying before they could get out what they had to say. Then it came out in broken words from both together. “Bee, there’s someone wants to speak to you at the gate.”