Mr. Benthall could not have been described as "goodness," nor was he a particularly far-seeing man, but he thought he knew the result. As he cantered slowly home that afternoon, he thought the matter out, and came to the conclusion that if Mrs. Creswell were the woman she was described, she would tolerate but for a very little time the presence of two persons so obnoxious in the same house with her, and that when that climax arrived, it was the time for the Rev. George Benthall to step in and do himself and everybody else concerned a good turn by taking Gertrude off her uncle's hands.
There was very little doubt that the shelter of the Woolgreaves roof and the luxuries of the Woolgreaves establishment would be required by one of its inmates for but a very short time. Mrs. Ashurst's strength, which had been gradually declining, began to fail her altogether, and it was evident to all that the end was at hand. Dr. Osborne, who was in constant attendance--and the little man never showed to such advantage as under the most trying professional circumstances--shook his head sadly, and confessed that it had now become a question of days. But the old lady was so tranquil, and apparently so happy, that he hesitated to summon her daughter, more especially as the newly married couple were so soon expected home. The girl who attended on the old lady in the capacity of night-nurse had a different experience from Dr. Osborne so far as the tranquillity of the patient was concerned. She knew when she was awake--and considering that she was a full-blooded, heavy, bacon-fed lass, she really deserved much credit for the manner in which she propped her eyelids up with her forefingers, and resorted to sniffing instead of snoring--she knew that Mrs. Ashurst had very disturbed nights, when she lay moaning and groaning and plucking at the bedclothes, and constantly murmuring one phrase; "For my sake! Lord help her! God grant it may turn out right! She did it, I know, for my sake!" Gradually she lost consciousness, and in her wandering state she repeated nothing but this one phrase, "For my sake!" Occasionally she would smile placidly, and look round the room as though in admiration of its comfort and appointments, but then the sad look would come over her face, and she would repeat the melancholy sentence in the saddest of tones. Dr. Osborne, when he eventually came to hear of this, and to witness it, confessed he could not understand it. It was not a case for the College of Surgeons, nor getatable by the Pharmacopoeia; it was what Shakespeare said--he'd heard his girl read it--about not being able to minister to a mind diseased, or something of that sort; and yet, God bless him, Mrs. Ashurst was about the last woman to have anything of the kind. However, he should be deuced glad when little Marian--ah, mustn't call her little Marian now; beg pardon, Mrs. Creswell--funny, wasn't it? couldn't get that into his head! had known 'em all so long, and never thought--nor anybody else, for the matter of that. However, that's neither here nor there. What's that proverb, eh?--"There's no fool like an----" No, no, mustn't say that before him, please. What was he saying? Oh, he should be glad when Mrs. Creswell came home, and took her mother under her own charge.
Mr. and Mrs. Creswell came home two days before they were expected, or rather before they had originally intended. Marian had heard of her mother's illness, and expressed a wish to go to her at once--a wish which of course decided Mr. Creswell's course of action. The tenants and villagers, to whom the news of Mr. Creswell's intended political experiment had been imparted during his absence, had intended to give him a welcome in which they could express their sentiments on flags and mottoes and triumphal arches; and they had already arranged an alliterative sentence, in which "Creswell and Conservatism!" each picked out with gigantic capital letters, were to play conspicuous parts; but Dr. Osborne, who got wind of what was threatened, drove off to Brocksopp in his little pony-chaise, and there took Mr. Teesdale, the agent, into confidence, and revealed to him the real state--hovering between life and death--in which Mrs. Ashurst then lay. On the reception of this information, Mr. Teesdale took upon himself to hint that the intended demonstration had better be postponed for a more convenient season; and accordingly Mr. and Mrs. Creswell, arriving by the train at Brocksopp, and having their carriage to meet them, drove through the streets when the working-people were all engaged at their factories and mills, and made their way home, scarcely exciting any recognition.
The two girls, on the alert at hearing the wheels of the approaching carriage, rushed to the door, and were honoured by being permitted to kiss the cheek of the bride, as she swept past them. No sooner had they kissed their uncle, and were all assembled in the drawing-room, than Marian asked after her mother.
"I'm afraid you will find her very much changed, Mrs. Creswell," said Maude, who, of course, was spokeswoman. "Mrs. Ashurst is very much weaker, and has--has occasional fits of wandering, which----"
"Why was I not informed of this?" asked Marian, in her chilliest tones. "Were you both so much engaged, that you could not manage to let me have a line to tell me of this change in my mother's state?"
"Maude wanted to write and tell you, but Dr. Osborne wouldn't let her," blustered out Gertrude. "She never will say anything for herself, but I'm sure she has been most attentive, Maude has, and I don't think----"
"I'm sorry to interrupt this lobgesang,Gertrude; but I must go up and see my mother at once. Be good enough to open the door." "And she sailed out of the room," Gertrude said, afterwards, "as though she'd been a duchess! In one of those rustling silks, don't you know, as stiff as a board, which look as if they'd stand up by themselves!"
When Marian reached her mother's door, and was just about entering, she stopped short, arrested by a low dull moaning sound which fell upon her ear. She listened with her blood curdling within her and her lips growing cold and rigid. Still it came, that low hollow moan, monotonous, dreadful. Then she opened the door, and, passing swiftly in, saw her mother lying tossing on the bed, plucking furtively at the bedclothes, and moaning as she moved her head wearily in its unrest.
"Mother!" cried Marian--"mother, darling mother don't you know me?" And she flung herself on the bed, and, taking the old woman's head in her arms, softly kissed her lips.