“Here I am,” Fan answered, sitting down upon the edge of the bed and taking in hers the cold, clammy hand which was moving restlessly. “Here I am; do you want to tell me something?”
“Yes. About the little baby. Would you object to calling him Paul Haverleigh, after The Boy?”
“No, no; I’d like it,” Fan answered with a choking voice, for, with that subtle intuition which we cannot define, she felt the dark shadow stealing into the room and settling upon the features of our stepmother.
“In my wish to do right, I went wrong with Paul. I know it now, and am sorry. I shall tell him when I see him, and tell him of you. Keep Carl straight. He has fine instincts, but is easily influenced and may be led astray if the temptation comes in pleasant guise. If he falls it will be a woman who lures him on. Keep him as much as possible under your influence and Annie’s. I wish I might see him again, but—” Here her mind began to wander. “It’s getting late. Katy ought to go to bed. Good-night, Katy. I have loved you more than you know.”
She lifted herself up and kissed the bright face bent down to hers, and then lay back upon her pillow as if utterly exhausted.
“Must I go to bed before the sun is down?” Katy whispered to her father, who shook his head and held her closely to him.
It was hours yet before the sun would set, and as they dragged slowly on we watched the dying woman who talked of many things strange to us. Of her first husband and her early home in Maine, and the school-house under the hill with the girls and boys she had known and played with there. They were old men and women now, she said, and their faces were tired and worn as if life had been hard to bear, and she had so much wanted to help them in some way. Then she spoke of Paul and we learned more of him from her ravings than we had known before, and saw more of the motives and principles which had actuated her conduct. Neither were bad, but strict almost to severity. Then she talked of Carl and Katy and father and ourselves, who, she said, did not understand her, but she never mentioned the little baby so soon to be left motherless. He had come into her life so recently and his coming had brought her so low that she seemed to have forgotten him entirely. She grew very quiet at last and fell asleep, while Fan, who always rose to the occasion, took her post at the bedside, bidding the nurse take the rest she needed so much. It was not a long vigil we kept, for as the sun was setting Mrs. Hathern awoke and began to move her hands over the bedclothes as if in quest of something.
“Where is it? Do you know?” she said to Fan, who, divining her meaning, went to the next room where the baby was sleeping in Phyllis’s lap.
Fan had not seen it yet and she scarcely glanced at it now, but she lifted it very carefully in her arms and brought it to its mother.
“Look,” she said. “It’s the baby.”