Horatia was gone before the Rector had got to his chair. She was back in a few minutes.
"Papa, if I may I shall send Sam Dawes for the doctor. I don't think it is anything serious, at least I hope not, but he seems so drowsy and feverish, and he has been very sick, poor darling."
"He was quite well this morning," observed the Rector, astonished. "Indeed, he was making such a great noise in here that I could hardly get on with my sermon."
(4)
Maurice de la Roche-Guyon, who was to have a drum and many other delights on his third Christmas Day, did not seem likely to receive these now, though as he lay, flushed and brilliant-eyed, chattering to himself, his rambling talk ran sometimes on his small possessions.
"A child to give back to God." All through the two long agonising nights and days the words echoed in Horatia's head, with those others "He is stripping you of everything." Every few hours the doctor came, and there was never any change, except that Maurice's breathing seemed to get more and more rapid as his lungs consolidated. And Horatia could do nothing, for now she could not even pray.
"He is stripping you of everything." Then He wanted from her the last thing, the best thing, the thing incomparably the dearest, not the baby she had refused to look at, not the baby who had been a delightful toy at Plaisance, a growing interest in England, but her own child, her very own, to hold through the years against sorrow and change, to be, not her comfort but her existence, not a consolation for what she had lost, but life itself. And set against it all, inexorable, "a child to give back to God"—not hers at all, but only a treasure lent...
"O God, save Maurice—take the rest, take everything, I give it willingly, only save Maurice! I will give him back to You in the end, only leave him a little longer!" But she believed that her prayers could not pierce the thick cloud that hung now between her and the Christ she had so lately come to know, though she never doubted that prayer could reach Him—the prayer of a heart that prayed always...
Downstairs were the floods of toys, the half-filled stocking, the holly and the mistletoe; up here the gift of gifts was going away from her.
"O God, make me so that I can pray to You...."