At last Bess’s sobs grew less violent, and she lay quiet.
“Do you feel better now?” I asked.
“Yes,” came back from Bess; “for the curses, Mum Mum, seem to have gone out of the room and to be dying away. Before you came, the whole place seemed full of them, and eyes, great horrid eyes, seemed to be looking at me everywhere, and I couldn’t rest, do what I would.”
“Now you can sleep,” I said with a smile, “and I will sit by you till all the evil spirits are gone, and guard you.”
So I sat on without speaking, and held Bess’s hands till the dustman of children’s fancy came with his sandbags and threw the sand of kindly oblivion into my little maiden’s eyes, and she fell asleep. Then softly and as delicately as I could, I untwined the little network of fingers that had twined themselves so cunningly around mine, and gave little Bess a parting kiss as I glided out of the room.
When I returned to the chapel hall I found a letter from Constance. In a postscript she told me that the idea of the quilt was taking form.
“From ‘Gerard’s Herbal’ I have chosen,” she wrote, “the King’s Chalice, or Serins’ Cade; the Dalmatian Cap; the Guinny Hen; the Broad-leaved Saffron; Goat’s Rue, or the Herb of Grace; Ladies’ Smock; Golden Mouse-ear; Solomon’s Seal; Star of Bethlehem; Sops in Wine; Ales-hoof; Wolf’s Bane and Golden Rod. I give you all the old names. On a scroll I propose round the quilt or ‘bed hoddin,’ as Shropshire folks would call it, to work wise and beautiful words about sleep;” and her letter ended with an appeal to me, to help her, by finding some apt saws and quotations for this purpose. Of course I will; what a delightful excuse for looking through the poets, I said to myself.
I looked at the old Dutch clock. Ten minutes, I said, before going to bed. Ten minutes, ten golden minutes, when it is not a duty to do anything, or a matter of reproach to be idle. The fire was dying softly down. I saw all faintly by the dim light of the lamp—the dark panelling, the two Turners, the old Bohemian bench, the stern outline of the altar, and outside the still night.
THE COMPANY OF SAINTS
“Are you not afraid to sit by yourself?” a somewhat foolish friend once asked me. “I should be terribly alarmed of ghosts.”