The pretty subterfuge was also a very good one. It would have been almost mortal anguish to her, had they sought to bear her poor wrecked body up that winding stair-way.
So into “Mr. Jack’s room” they carried her, and placed her full gently on his forsaken bed.
Aunt Tishy came hurrying with inarticulate cries. They hushed her as best they might, telling her that any disturbance might kill the girl. Then little Hicks mounted one of Roden’s best horses and dashed off in search of a surgeon.
Virginia lay quiet and quite content, staring with wide-open eyes at the well-known objects in the airy room. Another delightful fancy seized upon her. Ah! it was good to lie there and die, and pretend that she had been his wife, and that it was her right to die in there with all those much-loved manly kickshaws about her: the Scotch deer-stalker’s cap, which hung on one of the sconces of a little mirror over the mantle; that heap of glittering spurs on a table near at hand; his whip; his boots; an old blue flannel shirt on the bed’s foot. She had not allowed any one to enter his room since he left for Windemere, nor had she herself been in it.
And even if he didn’t forgive her, she saved Bonnibel. Suddenly there came upon her an awful, crashing agony.
“Mammy! mammy!” she called, in her childhood’s voice. She clung to her old nurse with might and main. “Oh, mammy, mammy, I’m payin’ fur it! Yuh don’ know, but I’m payin’ fur it. I’m so glad—I’m so glad! Mammy, sing me ’bout ’though yo’ sins be as scarlet’—sing! sing!”
The old negress, as well as she could for sobbing, sang to her in such words as these:
“’Tis de old ship o’ Zion,
Come to take us all ho-ome—
Glory, glory, hallelujah!