“Please, Mrs. Schuyler, I think Mrs. Barrett is very sick.”
In a moment Edith was out of bed and knotting the cord of her dressing-gown with trembling hands, while the colonel, also roused from his first deep sleep, and remembering Mrs. Rogers, who had gotten Edith up at midnight, wondered to himself “why these people would always persist in being sick at such inopportune times, and send for Edith to help them.”
The colonel was very sleepy and a little inclined to be unreasonable, and, after Edith had gone to her mother, he lay awake for a long time listening to the sound of voices in Mrs. Barrett’s room, the shutting of doors, the footsteps in the hall, and the general commotion, until he began to wonder if for Edith’s sake he ought not to get up and see what was the matter.
Ere long, however, he heard Mrs. Tiffe say to one of the maids, as she passed his door, that it was nothing but cramps and a good deal of hypo; and thus reassured he composed himself to sleep, and did not waken, when, in the gray of the early morning, Edith crept shivering to his side.
CHAPTER L.
THE STORM GATHERING.
It was more than the cramps and the hypo which ailed Mrs. Barrett, though at first it seemed much like both, and after seeing her fall away to sleep, Edith went to her own room without a thought of danger. But later in the morning, when she stood again by her mother’s bedside, and saw how pinched her features were, and how old and worn she looked without her teeth and puffs of hair, and how weak and helpless she seemed, she began to feel some alarm and sent for the physician at once. It was a severe cold, the doctor said, and there was no danger to be apprehended; but Mrs. Barrett thought differently. She had a settled conviction that the sickness coming on so fast was her last. She had only come to America to die, and Edith would not long be troubled with her, she said, in reproachful tones, which she meant should make her daughter sorry that she had not been more pleased to see her. And Edith was sorry, and made every possible amends by nursing her herself, and staying constantly with her.
And yet with all the care Mrs. Barrett grew worse, and every succeeding day found her weaker than the preceding one had left her. She did not seem to have any vitality or rallying force, and without any real disease sank so fast that within two weeks after her arrival in Hampstead, she came to the point where she looked death in the face and knew he was waiting for her.
There was no hope, and her only share in Edith’s grandeur would be a costly coffin and a great funeral, when many would look upon her face, never dreaming that they had seen it before. That was all, and she knew it now, and as earth began to fade away, and the realities of the next world loomed darkly in the distance, remorse came hand in hand with the shadow of death, and filled her heart with horror and anguish when she remembered the past and her sad, wasted life. It was no comfort to her now that the baptismal waters had once bedewed her head, and she been numbered outwardly with the children of God. To her there had never been any reality in religion. Everything was done for effect, and because it was respectable. For her there was no efficacy in Jesus’ blood, no heart yearnings after His presence, or tears because she could not feel Him with her. Even her praying had only been in public when it was the proper thing to do, for by herself she never prayed, never till now, when she stood face to face with death, and felt her burden of guilt and sin rolling over her like a mountain, and crushing her to the earth. Then conscience awoke, and like David she cried:
“My sin is ever before me.”