"Will you come and see her, Job? The doctor seemed to say as I liked, not as he thought."
"That's because he had no great thought on the subject, either one way or t'other," replied Job, whose contempt for medical men pretty nearly equalled his respect for lawyers. "But I'll go and welcome. I han not seen th' oud ladies since their sorrows, and it's but manners to go and ax after them. Come along."
The room at Mrs. Wilson's had that still, changeless look you must have often observed in the house of sickness or mourning. No particular employment going on; people watching and waiting rather than acting, unless in the more sudden and violent attacks; what little movement is going on, so noiseless and hushed; the furniture all arranged and stationary, with a view to the comfort of the afflicted; the window-blinds drawn down to keep out the disturbing variety of a sun-beam; the same saddened, serious look on the faces of the in-dwellers; you fall back into the same train of thought with all these associations, and forget the street, the outer world, in the contemplation of the one stationary, absorbing interest within.
Mrs. Wilson sat quietly in her chair, with just the same look Mary had left on her face; Mrs. Davenport went about with creaking shoes, which made all the more noise from her careful and lengthened tread, annoying the ears of those who were well, in this instance, far more than the dulled senses of the sick and the sorrowful. Alice's voice still was going on cheerfully in the upper room with incessant talking and little laughs to herself, or perhaps in sympathy with her unseen companions; "unseen," I say, in preference to "fancied," for who knows whether God does not permit the forms of those who were dearest when living, to hover round the bed of the dying?
Job spoke, and Mrs. Wilson answered.
So quietly, that it was unnatural under the circumstances. It made a deeper impression on the old man than any token of mere bodily illness could have done. If she had raved in delirium, or moaned in fever, he could have spoken after his wont, and given his opinion, his advice, and his consolation; now he was awed into silence.
At length he pulled Mary aside into a corner of the house-place where Mrs. Wilson was sitting, and began to talk to her.
"Yo're right, Mary! She's no ways fit to go to Liverpool, poor soul. Now I've seen her, I only wonder the doctor could ha' been unsettled in his mind at th' first. Choose how it goes wi' poor Jem, she cannot go. One way or another it will soon be over, and best to leave her in the state she is till then."
"I was sure you would think so," said Mary.
But they were reckoning without their host. They esteemed her senses gone, while, in fact, they were only inert, and could not convey impressions rapidly to the over-burdened, troubled brain. They had not noticed that her eyes had followed them (mechanically it seemed at first) as they had moved away to the corner of the room; that her face, hitherto so changeless, had begun to work with one or two of the old symptoms of impatience.