CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD.
THE EBB OF LIFE.
There was nothing now for me to do but to devote myself wholly to my mother.
I made the malady under which she was slowly sinking my special study. There remained a spark of hope yet in my heart that I might by diligent, intense, unflagging search, discover some remedy yet untried, or perhaps unthought of. I succeeded only in alleviating her sufferings. I pored over every work which treated of the same class of diseases. At last in an old, almost-forgotten book, I came upon a simple medicament, which, united with appliances made available by modern science, gave her sensible relief, and without doubt tended to prolong her shortening days. The agonizing thought haunted me that, had I come upon this discovery at an earlier stage of her illness, her life might have been spared for many years.
But it was too late now. She suffered less, and her spirits grew calm and even. We even ventured, at her own wish, to spend a week together in Sark, she and I—a week never to be forgotten, full of exquisite pain and exquisite enjoyment to us both. We revisited almost every place where we had been many years before, while I was but a child and she was still young and strong. Tardif rowed us out in his boat under the cliffs. Then we came home again, and she sank rapidly, as if the flame of life had been burning too quickly in the breath of those innocent pleasures.
Now she began to be troubled again with the dread of leaving me alone and comfortless. There is no passage in Christ's farewell to His disciples which, touches me so much as those words, "I will not leave you comfortless; I will come unto you." My mother could not promise to come back to me, and her dying vision looked sorrowfully into the future for me. Sometimes she put her fear into words—faltering and foreboding words; but it was always in her eyes, as they followed me wherever I went with a mute, pathetic anxiety. No assurances of mine, no assumed cheerfulness and fortitude could remove it. I even tried to laugh at it, but my laugh only brought the tears into her eyes. Neither reason nor ridicule could root it out—a root of bitterness indeed.
"Martin," she said, in her failing, plaintive voice, one evening when Julia and I were both sitting with her, for we met now without any regard to etiquette—"Martin, Julia and I have been talking about your future life while you were away."
Julia's face flushed a little. She was seated on a footstool by my mother's sofa, and looked softer and gentler than I had ever seen her look. She had been nursing my mother with a single-hearted, self-forgetful devotion that had often touched me, and had knit us to one another by the common bond of an absorbing interest. Certainly I had never leaned upon or loved Julia as I was doing now.
"There is no chance of your ever marrying Olivia now," continued my mother, faintly, "and it is a sin for you to cherish your love for her. That is a very plain duty, Martin."
"Such love as I cherish for Olivia will hurt neither her nor myself," I answered. "I would not wrong her by a thought."
"But she can never be your wife," she said.
"I never think of her as my wife," I replied; "but I can no more cease to love her than I can cease to breathe. She has become part of my life, mother."
"Still, time and change must make a difference," she said. "You will realize your loneliness when I am gone, though you cannot before. I want to have some idea of what you will be doing in the years to come, before we meet again. If I think at all, I shall be thinking of you, and I do long to have some little notion. You will not mind me forming one poor little plan for you once more, my boy?"
"No," I answered, smiling to keep back the tears that were ready to start to my eyes.
"I scarcely know how to tell you," she said. "You must not be angry or offended with us. But my dear Julia has promised me, out of pure love and pity for me, you know, that if ever—how can I express it?—if you ever wish you could return to the old plans—it may be a long time first, but if you conquered your love for Olivia, and could go back, and wished to go back to the time before you knew her—Julia will forget all that has come between. Julia would consent to marry you if you asked her to be your wife. O Martin, I should die so much happier if I thought you would ever marry Julia, and go to live in the house I helped to get ready for you!"
Julia's head had dropped upon my mother's shoulder, and her face was hidden, while my mother's eyes sought mine beseechingly. I was irresistibly overcome by this new proof of her love for both of us, for I knew well what a struggle it must have been to her to gain the mastery over her proper pride and just resentment. I knelt down beside her, clasping her hand and my mother's in my own.
"Mother, Julia," I said, "I promise that if ever I can be true in heart and soul to a wife, I will ask Julia to become mine. But it may be many years hence; I dare not say how long. God alone knows how dear Olivia is to me. And Julia is too good to waste herself upon so foolish a fellow. She may change, and see some one she can love better."
"That is nonsense, Martin," answered Julia, with a ring of the old sharpness in her tone; "at my age I am not likely to fall in love again.—Don't be afraid, aunt; I shall not change, and I will take care of Martin. His home is ready, and he will come back to me some day, and it will all be as you wish."
I know that promise of ours comforted her, for she never lamented over my coming solitude again.
I have very little more I can say about her. When I look back and try to write more fully of those last, lingering days, my heart fails me. The darkened room, the muffled sounds, the loitering, creeping, yet too rapid hours! I had no time to think of Julia, of Olivia, or of myself; I was wrapped up in her.
One evening—we were quite alone—she called me to come closer to her, in that faint, far-off voice of hers, which seemed already to be speaking from another world. I was sitting so near to her that I could touch her with my hand, but she wanted me nearer—with my arm across her, and my cheek against hers.
"My boy," she whispered, "I am going."
"Not yet, mother," I cried; "not yet! I have so much to say. Stay with me a day or two longer."
"If I could," she murmured, every word broken with her panting breath, "I would stay with you forever! Be patient with your father, Martin. Say good-by for me to him and Julia. Don't stir. Let me die so!"
"You shall not die, mother," I said, passionately.
"There is no pain," she whispered—"no pain at all; it is taken away. I am only sorry for my boy. What will he do when I am gone? Where are you, Martin?"
"I am here, mother!" I answered—"close to you. O God! I would go with you if I could."
Then she lay still for a time, pressing my arm about her with her feeble fingers. Would she speak to me no more? Had the dearest voice in the world gone away altogether into that far-off, and, to us, silent country whither the dying go? Dumb, blind, deaf to me? She was breathing yet, and her heart fluttered faintly against my arm. Would not my mother know me again?
"O Martin!" she murmured, "there is great love in store for us all! I did not know how great the love was till now!"
There had been a quicker, more irregular throbbing of her heart as she spoke. Then—I waited, but there came no other pulsation. Suddenly I felt as if I also must be dying, for I passed into a state of utter darkness and unconsciousness.