Then sometimes Mrs. Raeburn would bury herself in the bedclothes to lie motionless until they had gone, or sometimes she would count on her fingers mysterious sums and ghostly numerals comprehended in the dim mid-region where her soul sojourned. If Jenny or May looked up in embarrassment, they would see all around them reasonless heads, some smiling and bobbing and beckoning, some grimacing horribly, and every one, save the listless head they loved best, occupied with mad speculations upon the identity of the two girls. After every visit, as hopelessly they were leaving the ward, the nurse would say:
"I expect your mother will be better next time you come and able to talk a bit."
They would be shown into a stuffy little parlor while the brougham was being brought round, a stuffy little room smelling of plum-cake and sherry. In the window hung a cage containing an old green paroquet that all the time swore softly to itself and seemed in the company of the mad to have lost its own clear bird's intelligence. Then back they would drive along the straight, wet avenue in a sound of twilight gales, back to the rain-soaked, dreary little station in whose silent waiting-room they would sit, crying softly to themselves, until the Marylebone train came in.
These visits continued for six weeks, and then, on the fourth visit, just as April had starred the Chilterns with primroses, the nurse whispered while they were walking through the ward's distraught glances:
"I think your mother will know you to-day."
"Why?" Jenny whispered back.
"I think she will, somehow."
Up the ward they went with hearts beating expectantly, while the voices of the mad folk chattered on either side. "Look at her golden hair." "That's St. Michael. Holy Michael, pray for us." One young woman with pallid, tear-washed face was moaning: "Why can't I be dead, oh, why can't I be dead?" And an old woman, gray as an ash tree, was muttering very quickly to herself: "Oh, God help me; O, dear Lord help me!" on and on without a pause in the gibbering reiteration. Some of the patients waved and bobbed as usual, mopping and mowing and imparting wild secrets from the wild land in which they lived, and others scowled and shook their twisted fists. This time, indeed, their mother did look different, as if from the unknown haunted valleys in which her soul was imprisoned she had gained some mountain peak with a view of home.
"How are you, mother?" Jenny asked.
Mrs. Raeburn stared at her perplexed but not indifferent. Nor did she try to hide herself as usual. Suddenly she spoke in a voice that to her daughters seemed like the voice of a ghost.