Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this position.
“It matters very little!” said Alice, with a faint smile. “Better or worse today, is but a day’s difference—perhaps not so much.”
Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as feeling for the patient’s feet and expecting to find them stony; went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say, “while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.”
“No,” said Alice, whispering to her visitor, “evil courses, and remorse, travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have worn my life away. It will not last much longer.
She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
“I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!”
How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage, defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.
Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her head, expressing that tortures shouldn’t make her say it was a hopeless case. Mrs Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust—for she was a serious character—and withdrew to partake of certain funeral baked meats downstairs.
“How long is it,” asked Alice, “since I went to you and told you what I had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to follow?”
“It is a year and more,” said Harriet.