“She would certainly come if she could,” I answered.
After a time my cramped limbs compelled me to rise. I stood up, and the two boys looked at me reflectively.
“Where are you going, Rachel? Where are you going?”
“I can’t stand it any longer,” I said. “I am his daughter, and you are his sons, and I think we ought to be there. I do—I do.”
“No,” said Alex firmly; “I am not going against her. She has managed him all along. It would be frightfully unkind to do anything to risk giving him a start or anything of that sort. She said she’d bring us to him if it were necessary. I am not going to stir.”
“Will you come, Charley?” I said.
“No; I’ll stick to Alex,” he responded.
He went closer to his brother as he spoke, and flung his arm round him with all the abandon of one who was altogether carried out of himself.
I did not speak. I felt alone again, outside my brothers and their love; but just because I was so alone I thought more than ever of my father. I had rushed away from Paris to be in time; I would see him again. I left the room and crept softly upstairs. All day long I had been wearing my travelling-boots; it did not seem worth while to take them off; nobody had given me a thought. For the first time since my step-mother came I had been neglected in our now comfortable home.
When I reached the landing where the great, desolate room which had been made so comfortable by my step-mother was situated, I took off my shoes and stood very quiet. I saw that the door of my father’s room was slightly ajar. Inside there was the flickering light of a fire—not a very big fire; there was a screen round the bed. I felt more and more a keen and passionate desire to enter the room. I could bear it no longer. I crept inside the door and round by the screen. Then I saw that the room had been changed since I had noticed it last. The great four-poster was removed, and a man was lying on a little iron bedstead drawn out almost into the middle of the room. There was a woman seated close to him. She sat very still; she did not seem to move. The man also, who was lying on his back, was motionless. A wild terror seized me. Was he dead? Oh! I feared death at that moment, but still that impulse, uncontrollable, growing stronger each moment, compelled me forward, and still more forward, and at last I came very near the woman. She roused herself when she saw me. There was no reproach of any sort on her face. It was very white, but her eyes had never looked sweeter.