"Trust in the Lord, my dear. There may be a bow in the dark cloud—who can tell?"
Then Graves went to the Miss Hoblyns, who had considerately left Griselda and the child alone together, and she arranged a bedroom at the back of the house, and placed her young mistress's possessions in some order.
"The young lady will be able to pay for her lodgings and board, madam," Graves said, "and for the child's also. She has already sold some jewels, and——"
But Miss Hoblyn waved her hand, as if to say she wanted nothing else said just then, and Graves proceeded to light a fire, and make the room allotted to Griselda's use as comfortable as circumstances allowed; and then, wringing Miss Hoblyn's delicate hand in her large work-worn fingers, she hastened back to North Parade.
There was no immediate need for Griselda to put on a mourning garment. Distress of mind, and the long, long walk in the cold chill air of January to Claverton Down, had the effect of throwing her into an illness—a fever—which attacked her brain, and rendered her unconscious of all troubles, past and present, for some time.
It was touching to see how the child, so prematurely old, and so well accustomed to privation and nursing of the sick, took up her place by her sister's bed, and proved the most efficient of little nurses—as nursing was understood in those days.
Griselda was certainly an instance of a patient suffering more from the remedy than the disease. The doctor—Mr. Cheyne—who was called in, let blood several times from her arm, cut off her beautiful hair, and blistered the back of her head, and brought her to the very verge of the grave. She took no heed of any one who came and went, or she would have seen Caroline Herschel by her bed every day, and would have known that many little delicacies were brought by her hand. She was immersed in ever-increasing musical engagements, for, besides the preparation for the oratorio to be performed during Lent, she actually copied with her own hand the scores of the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabæus" in parts for an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers; and in the vocal parts of Samson, Caroline Herschel instructed the treble singers, of whom she was now amongst the first.
Very few women of these days have gone through the amount of hard continuous labour which Caroline Herschel did; and when we are tempted to think highly of the increasing number of women, qualified by culture and natural gifts to fight the battle of life for themselves, we must not forget that the end of the eighteenth century produced a goodly list of able and distinguished women.
Perhaps Caroline Herschel has hardly received the prominent place she deserves in that list, and yet it would be hard to trace a life more useful and more loyally devoted to serve in the cause of science—a service which in her case, and that of her distinguished brother, was encompassed with difficulties, that would have daunted the courage of less steadfast souls.
While Leslie Travers lay on the borderland between life and death, all unconscious that the woman he loved so well was also treading the path through that dim mysterious valley of the shadow, the favourite scheme on which William Herschel set so many hopes failed!