“Here, mamma,” said Pamela, who watched with a sort of mechanical accuracy every indication of her mother’s will; and she put her soft arm under Mrs. Preston’s head and raised her with a strain of her slight girlish form, which at another moment would have been impossible. Jack made a step forward involuntarily to help her, but stopped short, arrested by the dying woman’s eyes, which she fixed upon him over Pamela’s shoulder as the cordial which was to give her strength to speak was put to her lips. She stopped even at that moment to look at him. “Not you,” she said, hoarsely—“not you.” It was not that he cared what she said, or even understood it, in his own excitement; but Pamela had her back turned upon him as she supported her mother; and Jack felt with a pang of poignant humiliation that there was no place for him there. Even her interests, the charge of her, seemed to be passing out of his hands.
“If you are going to speak to me—about—any thing,” cried Sara, “I don’t know what it is—nor why you should send for me; but do you want all these people too?”
Mrs. Preston looked at them vaguely—but she took no notice of what Sara said. “I have sent for you,” she cried, uttering two or three words at a time, as if making a last effort to be intelligible, “because you saved me. I leave her to you; you’re only a girl; you will not kill her; for the sake of her money. My mother’s money! And to think we might all have been—comfortable—and happy! and now, I’m going to die!”
“Oh, mamma!” cried Pamela, clasping her hands wildly, “if you would but put away every thing from your mind—if you would but stop, thinking, and do what the doctor says, you might get better yet.”
The dying woman made an attempt as it were to shake her head—she made a dreadful attempt to smile. “Poor child!” she said, and something like a tear got into her dilated eyes, “she don’t know. That’s life; never to know—till the very last—when you might have been happy—and comfortable; and then to die—”
“Mrs. Preston,” cried Sara, going up to the bed, “I don’t know what you mean or what I can do; but, oh, if you will only listen to Pamela! You are strong—you can speak and remember every thing. Oh, can’t you try to live for her sake? We will all pray,” she cried with tears, “every one of us—if you will only try! Oh, Mr. Hardcastle, pray for her—why should she die, and she so strong? and to leave Pamela like this!”
“Hush,” said Mr. Hardcastle, almost sternly, “Sara, you forget there are things more important than life.”
“Not to Pamela!” cried Sara, carried away by the vehemence of her feelings. “Oh, Mrs. Preston, try! You are strong yet—you could live if you were to try.”
A kind of spasm passed over the poor woman’s face. Perhaps a momentary hope of being able to make that effort crossed her mind—perhaps it was only a terrible smile at the vanity of the proposal. But it passed and left her eyes more wild in their passionate entreaty than before, “You don’t—answer,” she said; “you forsake me—like the rest. Sara! Sara! you are killing me. She is killing me. Give me an answer. Oh, my God, she will not speak!”
Sara looked round upon them all in her dismay. “You should have the doctor,” she said: her inexperienced mind had seized upon Pamela’s incoherent remonstrance. “Where is the doctor? Oh, could not something be done for her if he was here?”