“Oh, mamma, I don’t want to hear,” cried Pamela; “oh, lie down and take what the doctor says; oh, mamma, mamma, if you care for me! Don’t sit up and wear out your strength, and break my heart.”
“It’s for you—it’s all for you!” cried the sufferer; and she moved the hands on which she was supporting herself, and threw forward her ghastly head, upon which Death itself seemed to have set its mark. “I’ve no time to lose—I’m dying, and I’ve forgotten it all. Oh, my God, to think I should forget! Come here, if you are a man, and tell me what it was!”
Jack stepped forward like a man in a dream. He saw that she might fall and die the next moment; her worn bony arms began to tremble, her head fell forward, her eyes staring at him seemed to loosen in their sockets. Perhaps she had but half an hour longer to live. The strength of death was in her no less than its awful weakness. “Tell me,” she repeated, in a kind of babble, as if she could not stop. Pamela, who never thought nor questioned what her mother’s real meaning was, kept trying, with tears and all her soft force, to lay her down on the pillows; and the doctor, who thought her raving, stood by and looked on with a calm professional eye, attributing all her excitement to the delirium of death. In the midst of this preoccupied group Jack stood forward, held by her eye. An unspeakable struggle was going on in his mind. Nobody believed there was any meaning in her words. Was it he that must give them a meaning, and furnish forth the testimony that was needed against himself? It was but to be silent, that was all, and no one would be the wiser. Mrs. Swayne, too, was in the room, curious but unsuspicious. They all thought it was she who was “wandering,” and not that he had any thing to tell.
Then once more she raised her voice, which grew harsher and weaker every moment. “I am dying,” she cried; “if you will not tell me I will speak to God. I will speak to him—about it—he—will send word—somehow. Oh my God, tell me—tell me—what was it?—before I die.”
Then they all looked at him, not with any real suspicion, but wondering. Jack was as pale almost as the dying creature who thus appealed to him. “I will tell you,” he said, in a broken voice. “It was about money. I can’t speak about legacies and interest here. I will speak of it—when—you are better. I will see—that she has her rights.”
“Money!” cried Mrs. Preston, catching at the word—“money—my mother’s money—that is what it was. A fortune, Pamela! and you’ll have friends—plenty of friends when I’m gone. Pamela, Pamela, it’s all for you.”
Then she fell back rigid, not yielding, but conquered; for a moment it seemed as if some dreadful fit was coming on; but presently she relapsed into the state in which she had been before—dumb, rigid, motionless, with a frame of ice, and two eyes of fire. Jack staggered out of the room, broken and worn out; the very doctor, when he followed, begged for wine, and swallowed it eagerly. It was more than even his professional nerves could bear.
“She ought to have died then,” he said; “by all sort of rules she ought to have died; but I don’t see much difference in her state now; she might go on like that for days—no one can say.”
Jack was not able to make any answer; he was worn out as if with hard work; his forehead was damp with exhaustion; he too gulped down some of the wine Mrs. Swayne brought them, but he had no strength to make any reply.
“Mr. Brownlow, let me advise you to go home,” said the doctor; “no one can do any good here. You must make the young lady lie down, Mrs. Swayne. There will be no immediate change, and there is nothing to be done but to watch her. If she should recover consciousness again, don’t cross her in any thing: give her the drops if possible, and watch—that’s all that can be done. I shall come back in the course of the day.”