I never can look back to that day without a shudder; thinking how Philip and I might have been left childless. We had lost two little ones already; and if the three others had been taken—But mercifully we were spared!
I don't know how I told Mrs. Murchison of little Bessie's death. It was one of the most terrible things I have ever had to do. She seems to remember all I said, but I do not. I only remember her look,— the sad despairing certainty that one was gone; the longing and the dread to know which; the bitterness of that sorrowful cry,—"Oh, not Jervis! Oh, not my Bessie!"—then the strange quiet with which she listened to my poor attempts to comfort; and the patient begging to go to her child. Perhaps that did her good! the little one looked so unutterably sweet.
And then she was enough herself to be able to try and comfort my poor broken-down Bertram. The boy had been in such an agony, blaming himself for taking them all to that part of the beach, talking as if the little one's death lay at his door. I sent him to her when I was not in the room; but he was gone again before I returned.
Nurse Coles' new little home was very near; not a hundred yards from our garden gate. If it had been more, Mrs. Murchison could hardly have walked so far.
We had had Nurse Coles near us for years, ever since she had been out of a place, and we thought then that she would remain near us always. She was devoted to my husband, and to all of us; a good faithful servant of the old type. She belonged to us, and we to her; her interests were ours, and ours were hers.
My husband was on the beach almost immediately after the fall of rock took place: for the news spread like wildfire, and he happened to be passing near. He thought of Nurse Coles' rooms the first thing, and when Murchison and little Bessie were dug out, he had poor Murchison taken at once to Mrs. Coles, as well as Louey; while I think it was my thought to have little Bessie's body brought to our basement-room. But everything at first seemed in such a strange confusion.
Murchison was still unconscious when we reached the cottage, and the doctor was only just gone, and Nurse Coles was tending him.
"It was a bad case," she whispered to me; "the poor fellow was so frightfully crushed and hurt all over; two ribs and one arm broken, and both head and back injured—nobody could say how much."
"Is there any hope for him?" Mrs. Murchison asked; and I saw that she had overheard every word.
Nurse Coles shook her head dubiously.