She bowed. "Yes, I shall be with Letty all the time."
"As soon as Baker goes, I'll come up. I asked the doctor to spend the night."
"He said he couldn't get here before ten or eleven, but to telephone if we needed him," broke in Mrs. Timberlake. "Mammy Riah has gone to the nursery, Miss Meade. Is there any reason why she shouldn't stay?"
"None in the world." As Caroline turned away and ascended the stairs, she remembered that there had been no question of Angelica. "I wish I could understand. I wish I knew what it means," she said to herself in perplexity. She felt smothered by the uncertainty, the coldness, the reserve of the people about her. Everybody seemed to speak with tight lips, as if in fear lest something might escape that would help to clear away the obscurity. It was all so different from The Cedars, where every thought, every joy, every grief, was lived in a common centre of experience.
When she opened the nursery door, Mammy Riah glanced up from the fire, where she was crouching over the low fender. "I'se mortal feared, honey," she muttered, while she held out her wrinkled palms to the blaze. She had flung a shawl of crimson wool over her shoulders, and the splash of barbaric colour, with her high Indian cheek bones and the low crooning sound of her voice, gave her a resemblance to some Oriental crooked image of Destiny. As the wind rocked the elms on the lawn, she shivered, and rolled her glittering eyes in the direction of Letty's bed.
"Don't give up, Mammy Riah," said Caroline consolingly. "You have nursed children through worse illnesses than this."
"Yas'm, I know I is, but dar wan' noner dese yer signs dat I see now." The flames leaped up suddenly, illuminating her stooping figure in the brilliant shawl with an intense and sinister glow. "I ain't sayin' nuttin'. Naw'm, I ain' lettin' on dat I'se seen whut I'se seen; but dar's somebody done thowed a spell on dis place jes ez sho' ez you live. Dar wuz a ring out yonder on de grass de fust thing dis mawnin', en de fros' ain' never so much ez teched it. Naw, honey, de fros' hit ain' never come a nigh hit. Patrick he seed hit, too, but he ain' let on nuttin' about hit needer, dough de misery is done cotched him in bofe er his feet."
"You don't really think we're conjured, Mammy?"
Mammy Riah cast a secretive glance over her shoulder, and the dramatic instinct of her race awoke in every fibre of her body as she made a vague, mournful gesture over the ashes. "I 'members, honey, I 'members," she muttered ominously. Though Caroline had been familiar with such superstitions from infancy, there was a vividness in these mysteries and invocations which excited her imagination. She knew, as she assured herself, that there "wasn't anything in it"; yet, in spite of her reason, the image of the old woman muttering her incantations over the fire, haunted her like a prophetic vision of evil.
Turning away she went over to Letty's bed, and laid her small, cool fingers on the child's pulse.