CHAPTER XLII.
BERTHA KEYS DEFEATED.
There is little doubt that Mrs. Aylmer was very ill. Step by step an attack, which was apparently at first of little moment, became serious and then dangerous. The cold became pneumonia, the pneumonia became double pneumonia, and now there was a hard fight for life. Nurses were summoned, doctors were requisitioned, everything that wealth could do was employed for the relief and the recovery of the sick woman. But there are times when Death laughs at wealth, with all its contrivances and all its hopes: when Death takes very little heed of what friends say or what doctors do. Death has his own duty to perform, and Mrs. Aylmer's time had come. Notwithstanding the most recent remedies for the fell disease, notwithstanding the care of the best nurses London could supply and the skill of the cleverest doctors, Death entered that sick-chamber and stood by that woman's pillow and whispered to her that her hour had come.
Mrs. Aylmer, propped up in her bed so that she might breathe better, her face ghastly with the terrible exertion, called Bertha to her side. She could scarcely speak, but she managed to convey her meaning to the girl.
"I am very bad; I know I shall not recover."
"You have to make your will over again," said Bertha, who was as cool as cool could be in this emergency. Not one of the nurses could be more collected or calm than Bertha. She herself would have made a splendid nurse, for she had tact and sympathy, and the sort of voice which never grated on the ear. The doctors were almost in love with her: they thought they had never seen so capable a girl, so grave, so quiet, so suitably dressed, so invaluable in all emergencies.
Mrs. Aylmer could scarcely bear Bertha out of her sight, and the doctors said to themselves: "Small wonder!"
On the afternoon of the day when Mrs. Aylmer the less went to see Florence in London, Mrs. Aylmer the great went down another step in the dark valley. The doctor said that she might live for two or three days more, but that he did not think it likely. The disease was spreading, and soon it would be impossible for her to breathe. She was frightened. She had not spent a specially good life. She had given, it is true, large sums in charity, but she had not really ever helped the poor, and had not brought a smile to the lip or a tear of thankfulness to the eye. She had lived a hard life; she had thought far more of herself than of her neighbour, and now that she was about to die it seemed to her that she was not ready. For the first time, all the importance of money faded from her mind. No matter how rich she was and how great, she would have to leave the world with a naked, unclothed soul. She could not take any of her great possessions with her, nor could she offer to her Maker a single thing which would satisfy Him, when He made up the balance of her account. She was frightened about herself.