“I don’t know. If I have, I will not express them. I am resolved on self-conquest, and your doubts of my courage only serve to strengthen my resolution.”
Arthur smiled—“I see you have a will of your own, Helen, under that gentle, child-like exterior, to which mine is forced to bend. But I will not suffer you to be beyond the reach of assistance. I will send a woman to sleep in the kitchen, whom you can call, if you require her aid. As I told you before, I do not apprehend any immediate danger, though I do not think she will rise from that bed again.”
Helen sighed, and tears gathered in her eyes. She accompanied Arthur to the door, that she might put the strong bar across it, which was Miss Thusa’s substitute for a lock.
“Perhaps I may call on my return,” said he, “but it is very doubtful. Take care of yourself and keep warm. And if any unfavorable change takes place, send the woman for me. And now good-night—dear, good, brave Helen. May God bless, and angels watch over you.”
He pressed her hand, wrapped his cloak around him, and left Helen to her solitary vigils. She lifted the massy bar with trembling hands, and slid it into the iron hooks, fitted to receive it. Her hands trembled, but not from fear, but delight. Arthur had called her “dear and brave”—and long after she had reseated herself by the lonely hearth, the echo of his gentle, manly accents, seemed floating round the walls.
The illness of Miss Thusa was very sudden. She had risen in the morning in usual health, and pursued until noon her customary occupation—when, all at once, as she told the young doctor, “it seemed as if a knife went through her heart, and a wedge into her brain—and she was sure it was a death-stroke.” For the first time, in the course of her long life, she was obliged to take her bed, and there she lay in helplessness and loneliness, unable to summon relief. The young doctor called in the afternoon as a friend, and found his services imperatively required as a physician. The only wish she expressed was to have Helen with her, and as soon as he had relieved the sufferings of his patient, Arthur brought Helen to the Hermitage. When she arrived, Miss Thusa was under the influence of an opiate, but opening her heavy eyes, a ray of light emanated from the dim, gray orbs, as Helen, pale and awe-struck, approached her bedside. She was appalled at seeing that powerful frame so suddenly prostrated—she was shocked at the change a few hours had wrought in those rough, but commanding features. The large eye-balls looked sunken, and darkly shaded below, while a wan, gray tint, melting off into a bluish white on the temples, was spread over the face.
“You will stay with me to-night, my child,” said she, in a voice strangely altered. “I’ve got something to tell you—and the time is come.”
“Yes. I will stay with you as long as you wish, Miss Thusa,” replied Helen, passing her hand softly over the hoary looks that shaded the brow of the sufferer. “I will nurse you so tenderly, that you will soon be well again.”
“Good child—blessed child!” murmured she, closing her eyes beneath the slumberous weight of the anodyne, and sinking into a deep sleep.
And now Helen sat alone, watching the aged friend, whose strongly-marked and peculiar character had had so great an influence on her own. For awhile the echo of Arthur’s parting words made so much music in her ear, it drowned the harsh, solemn ticking of the old clock, and stole like a sweet lullaby over her spirit. But gradually the ticking sounded louder and louder, and her loneliness pressed heavily upon her. There was a little, dark, walnut table, standing on three curiously wrought legs, in a corner of the room. On this a large Bible, covered with dark, linen cloth, was laid, and on the top of this Miss Thusa’s spectacles, with the bows crossing each other, like the stiffened arms of a corpse. Helen could not bear to look upon those spectacles, which had always seemed to her an inseparable part of Miss Thusa, lying so still and melancholy there. She took them up reverently, and laid them on a shelf, then drawing the table near the fire, or rather carrying it, so as not to awaken the sleeper, she opened the sacred book. The first words which happened to meet her eye, were—