But I at once regretted the involuntary exclamation. My mother was the living proof that there was no danger, at least not yet. Of course I remarked the circles round her eyes and her white cheeks, the tokens of nights of watching. But though weariness was evident in her every feature, it was as if it did not exist: one felt a higher will dominating it, or utilising it so long as might be necessary. And by a strange phenomenon, there was now in her manner of speaking, and of treating us, something—I could not say what, but I knew it was there—something of my father’s authority. Visibly, without knowing it, she was replacing him. But if there had been any danger she would have shown her woman’s weakness, she who was so quick to be anxious, and often about nothing at all, she so prompt to hear the approaching thunderstorm and light the blessed candle for our safety! I did not even see the holy light that always when night came down kept watch in her eyes like the little altar lamp in the sanctuary. No, no, if there had been any danger she would have asked for our help, and I would have sustained her with my youthful strength.
“Is what possible?” she replied to my question—thus completely reassuring me. She made no other reply, as if she hadn’t quite heard, but quite simply, in a gentle voice which endeavoured not to give pain, she went on to tell us what had taken place in our long absence.
“He is resting just now. Your Aunt Deen is with him. She has helped me much in nursing him. I’ll take you to his room presently. You can not imagine the effort which these last months have required of him. That is the cause of his illness, after he had overcome the pestilence, when his task was finished. Until then, I had never been able to get him to spare himself. Day and night he would be sent for, appealed to, as if there were no one but he. The whole town waited on his orders, begged for his help. His commands were the only ones that inspired confidence, but the demands were more than human strength could endure, and he did in fact go beyond human strength. They never gave him a moment’s respite—they thought him stronger than the stones that bear up the house, but even stones will break under too heavy a burden. One evening, just six days ago, he came home with a heavy chill. And almost immediately fever appeared. Oh, if he had not so overtaxed himself!”
She checked herself without completing her thought,—or did she not follow it out when she added after a moment’s reflection,
“I have notified Stephen, in Rome. Last evening he telegraphed me that he was setting out. I am glad that his Superior has permitted him to leave—it is a very long journey: we must give him almost twenty-four hours. I write every day to Bernard who is so far away. And Mélanie is praying for us.”
Thus she was gathering the family around its head. I asked,
“Why does not Mélanie come?”
“The Sisters of Charity never go back to their homes.”
“They nurse strangers and may not nurse their father!”
“It is the rule, Francis.”