CHAPTER XXVII
And the next morning came the "waking up" for which Dowie had so long waited and prayed. But not as Dowie had expected it or in the way she hard thought "Nature."
She had scarcely left her charge during the night though she had pretended that she had slept as usual in an adjoining room. She stole in and out, she sat by the bed and watched the face on the pillow and thanked God that—strangely enough—the child slept. She had not dared to hope that she would sleep, but before midnight she became still and fell into a deep quiet slumber. It seemed deep, for she ceased to stir and it was so quiet that once or twice Dowie became a little anxious and bent over her to look at her closely and listen to her breathing. But, though the small white face was always a touching sight, it was no whiter than usual and her breathing though low and very soft was regular.
"But where the strength's to come from the good God alone knows!" was Dowie's inward sigh.
The clock had just struck one when she leaned forward again. What she saw would not have disturbed her if she had not been overstrung by long anxiety. But now—after the woeful day—in the middle of the night with the echo of the clock's solitary sound still in the solitary room—in the utter stillness of moor and castle emptiness she was startled almost to fright. Something had happened to the pitiful face. A change had come over it—not a change which had stolen gradually but a change which was actually sudden. It was smiling—it had begun to smile that pretty smile which was a very gift of God in itself.
Dowie drew back and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh!" she said "Can she be—going—in her sleep?"
But she was not going. Even Dowie's fright saw that in a few moments more. Was it possible that a mist of colour was stealing over the whiteness—or something near colour? Was the smile deepening and growing brighter? Was that caught breath something almost like a little sob of a laugh—a tiny ghost of a sound more like a laugh than any other sound on earth?
Dowie slid down upon her knees and prayed devoutly—clutching at the robe of pity and holding hard—as women did in crowds nearly two thousand years ago.
"Oh, Lord Jesus," she was breathing behind the hands which hid her face—"if she can dream what makes her smile like that, let her go on, Lord Jesus—let her go on."
When she rose to her chair again and seated herself to watch it almost awed, it did not fade—the smile. It settled into a still radiance and stayed. And, fearful of the self-deception of longing as she was, Dowie could have sworn as the minutes passed that the mist of colour had been real and remained also and even made the whiteness a less deathly thing. And there was such a naturalness in the strange smiling that it radiated actual peace and rest and safety. When the clock struck three and there was no change and still the small face lay happy upon the pillow Dowie at last even felt that she dare steal into her own room and lie down for a short rest. She went very shortly thinking she would return in half an hour at most, but the moment she lay down, her tired eyelids dropped and she slept as she had not slept since her first night at Darreuch Castle.