"I will sit with him to-night, Sarah, if you will let me," she said; and Sarah assented.
It was still daylight when she found herself at her post. Mrs Mackenzie had just left the room to go down among the children, saying that she would return again before she left him for the night. To this the invalid remonstrated, begging his wife to go to bed.
"She has not had her clothes off for the last week," said the husband.
"It don't matter about my clothes," said Mrs Tom, still weeping. She was always crying when in the sick room, and always scolding when out of it; thus complying with the two different requisitions of her nature. The matter, however, was settled by an assurance on her part that she would go to bed, so that she might be stirring early.
There are women who seem to have an absolute pleasure in fixing themselves for business by the bedside of a sick man. They generally commence their operations by laying aside all fictitious feminine charms, and by arraying themselves with a rigid, unconventional, unenticing propriety. Though they are still gentle,—perhaps more gentle than ever in their movements,—there is a decision in all they do very unlike their usual mode of action. The sick man, who is not so sick but what he can ponder on the matter, feels himself to be like a baby, whom he has seen the nurse to take from its cradle, pat on the back, feed, and then return to its little couch, all without undue violence or tyranny, but still with a certain consciousness of omnipotence as far as that child was concerned. The vitality of the man is gone from him, and he, in his prostrate condition, debarred by all the features of his condition from spontaneous exertion, feels himself to be more a woman than the woman herself. She, if she be such a one as our Miss Mackenzie, arranges her bottles with precision; knows exactly how to place her chair, her lamp, and her teapot; settles her cap usefully on her head, and prepares for the night's work certainly with satisfaction. And such are the best women of the world,—among which number I think that Miss Mackenzie has a right to be counted.
A few words of affection were spoken between the brother and sister, for at such moments brotherly affection returns, and the estrangements of life are all forgotten in the old memories. He seemed comforted to feel her hand upon the bed, and was glad to pronounce her name, and spoke to her as though she had been the favourite of the family for years, instead of the one member of it who had been snubbed and disregarded. Poor man, who shall say that there was anything hypocritical or false in this? And yet, undoubtedly, it was the fact that Margaret was now the only wealthy one among them, which had made him send to her, and think of her, as he lay there in his sickness.
When these words of love had been spoken, he turned himself on his pillow, and lay silent for a long while,—for hours, till the morning sun had risen, and the daylight was again seen through the window curtain. It was not much after midsummer, and the daylight came to them early. From time to time she had looked at him, and each hour in the night she had crept round to him, and given him that which he needed. She did it all with a certain system, noiselessly, but with an absolute assurance on her own part that she carried with her an authority sufficient to ensure obedience. On that ground, in that place, I think that even Miss Todd would have succumbed to her.
But when the morning sun had driven the appearance of night from the room, making the paraphernalia of sickness more ghastly than they had been under the light of the lamp, the brother turned himself back again, and began to talk of those things which were weighing on his mind.
"Margaret," he said, "it's very good of you to come, but as to myself, no one's coming can be of any use to me."
"It is all in the hands of God, Tom."