The sweet bells were chiming people out of church, as was the custom at Timberdale on high festivals. Poor Lee sat listening to them, his hand held up to his aching head. There had been no church for him: he had neither clothes to go in nor face to sit through the service. Mamie, wrapped in an old bed-quilt, lay back on the pillow by the fire. The coal-merchant, opening his heart, had sent a sack each of best Staffordshire coal to ten poor families, and Lee’s was one. Except the Squire’s two shillings, he had had no money given to him. A loaf of bread was in the cupboard; and a saucepan of broth, made of carrots and turnips out of the garden, simmered on the trivet; and that would be their Christmas dinner.
Uncommonly low was Mamie to-day. The longer she endured this famished state of affairs the weaker she grew; it stands to reason. She felt that a few days, perhaps hours, would finish her up. The little ones were upstairs with their grandmother, so that she had an interval of rest; and she lay back, her breath short and her chest aching as she thought of the past. Of the time when James West, the handsome young man in his gay regimentals, came to woo her, as the soldier did the miller’s daughter. In those happy days, when her heart was light and her song blithe as a bird’s in May, that used to be one of her songs, “The Banks of Allan Water.” Her dream had come to the same ending as the one told of in the ballad, and here she lay, deserted and dying. Timberdale was in the habit of prosaically telling her that she had “brought her pigs to a fine market.” Of the market there could be no question; but when Mamie looked into the past she saw more of romance there than anything else. The breaking out of the church bells forced a rush of tears to her heart and eyes. She tried to battle with the feeling, then turned and put her cheek against her father’s shoulder.
“Forgive me, father!” she besought him, in a sobbing whisper. “I don’t think it will be long now; I want you to say you forgive me before I go. If—if you can.”
And the words finished up for Lee what the bells had only partly done. He broke down, and sobbed with his daughter.
“I’ve never thought there was need of it, or to say it, child; and if there had been—Christ forgave all. ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to men.’ The bells are ringing it out now. He will soon take us to Him. Mamie, my forlorn one: forgiven; yes, forgiven; and in His beautiful world there is neither hunger, nor disgrace, nor pain. You are dying of that cold you caught in the autumn, and I shan’t be long behind you. There’s no longer any place for me here.”
“Not of the cold, father; I am not dying of that, but of a broken heart.”
Lee sobbed. He did not answer.
“And I should like to leave my forgiveness to James, should he ever come back here,” she whispered: “and—and my love. Please tell him that I’d have got well if I could, if only for the chance of seeing him once again in this world; and tell him that I have thought all along there must be some mistake; that he did not mean deliberately to harm me. I think so still, father. And if he should notice little Mima, tell him——”
A paroxysm of coughing interrupted the rest. Mrs. Lee came downstairs with the children, asking if it was not time for dinner.