For the last week he has been very bad, in great and incessant pain; and Susan, abandoning all other duties, has given herself up to him.
No one has reprimanded her for this giving up of her daily work, though the household is suffering much through lack of her many customary ministrations. Even Miss Barry has forgotten to scold, and goes very silently about the house; whilst the Rector’s face has taken a heart-broken expression—the look it used to wear, as the elder children so well remember, after their mother’s death.
All day long Susan sits with her little boy, sometimes, when his aches are worse than usual, hushing him against her breast, and breathing soft childish songs into his ear to soothe his sufferings and keep up his heart, whilst her own is breaking. For is it not her fault that he is suffering now? If she had not forgotten him—this little lamb of her dead mother’s fold, left by that dying mother to her special care—he might be now as well and strong as all the rest of them.
She is sitting with him now in the schoolroom, lying back in the old armchair quite motionless, for the suffering child within her arms has fallen into a fitful slumber, when the door is opened, and Crosby enters. He had left the Park about a month ago, and had not been expected back for some time—not until the spring, indeed—but something unknown or unacknowledged even by himself had driven him back after four weeks to this small corner of the earth.
‘Sh!’ breathes Susan softly, putting up her hand. A warm flush has suddenly dyed her pale face, grown white through grief and many watchings. Her surprise at seeing Crosby is almost unbounded, and with it is another feeling—of joy, of comfort, of support. All through her strange joy and surprise, however, she remembers the child, and that he sleeps. Of late his slumbers have grown very precious.
Crosby advances slowly, carefully. This gives him time to look at Susan, to mark the sadness of the tender face bending over the sleeping child, to mark also the terrible lines of suffering on his. But his eyes wander always back to Susan.
In her grief, how beautiful she is! how human! how womanly! And with the child pressed against her breast. Oh, Susan, you were always pretty, but now! The grief is almost divine. Oh, little young Madonna!
But, then, to have Susan look like that! He wakes from his dreams of her beauty with a sharp anger against himself. And now only one thing is uppermost in his mind—Susan is suffering. Well, then, Susan must not be allowed to suffer.
‘He is ill?’ he says quickly, in a low tone.