There came a moment, however, when the courage of Agnes failed, and she could bear it no more. She told her sister again that she had a headache, a pretence which Mary seemed to understand, asking no questions—and would go early to bed. But she did not go to bed. It seemed something to sit up, to accompany the vigil of the nurse, the possibility of the change with the intensity of feeling if not of presence. When Agnes closed her eyes she seemed to see the whole scene—the room with its shaded light, the wasted form scarcely visible in the bed; the nurse—a silent figure—watching the long hours through. She did not know that the nurse who was then with the boy was one who did not hope—which was a thing which would have added heaviness to the vigil had she known it. She had not the heart to go to bed. It seemed somehow as if she were doing something for him to sit up and count the hours and spend her soul in broken breaths of prayer. Oh, how broken, how interrupted with a hundred fantastic uncontrollable imaginations! Still it was something to join herself to the vigil, if no more.
She was so absorbed in her own deep anxiety and thoughts that she did not hear any movement in the house, and thought nothing but that the household was asleep and hushed at its usual early hour. And when she heard a stealthy step come to her door after midnight, Agnes’ mind was so confused from reality by that vigil that she sprang up with a breathless terror lest it might be the nurse coming to call her to tell her the change had come, and that Mar’s life was fading away. She made a swift step to the door and opened it, unable to speak; but only found Lady Frogmore’s maid outside with an anxious face.
“Oh, Miss Hill, I’m so glad you’re up,” she said; “I wish you would come to my lady—she is not herself at all. I can’t tell what is the matter with her.”
“Hasn’t she gone to bed, Ford?”
“I got her to bed, ma’am, quite comfortable I thought; but I stopped about doing little things, for I saw she was wakeful; and then all at once she got up and called me and caught me by the arm. ‘Ford,’ she says, looking in my face very serious, ‘who was it that said, May he grow up an idiot and kill you? Who was it, who was it?’ ‘Oh, my lady, I don’t know,’ I said; ‘I never heard the words before.’ ‘It was a dreadful thing to say,’ she cries, always looking at me. ‘Ford, do you think words like that ever come true?’ Perhaps I was too bold, Miss Hill; but I spoke up and said, ‘No, my lady, I’m sure they don’t: for if they did God Almighty would be putting us in the power of the worst and dreadfullest—and He would never do that.’ ‘No, Ford, He would never do that,’ she said, with the tears in her dear eyes. Oh, Miss Hill, there’s some change coming. I don’t know what it is. And now she’s trying all her keys upon that box we brought from the Park. We’ve not been able to find one that would open it; but I got another bunch just now, and while she was busy I thought I’d come and call you. Don’t be frightened, Miss Hill. I don’t think it’s a change for the worse.”
“Oh, Ford,” said Agnes, “it is just the bitterness of life. It’s a change that will come too late. Oh, my boy! it must be his dear spirit that is moving his mother’s heart.”
“Let’s hope it’s something better than that. Let’s hope it means good news,” said the woman, who knew a great deal of the family in her long service, and nearly, if not all, its mysteries. But Agnes, whose heart was very heavy, only shook her head. When she went into her sister’s room, Mary was standing against the light, a white figure wrapped in a white dressing-gown. Her partial confusion of mind, the subdued and quiet life she had led, her exemption from strong emotions, had kept an air of comparative youth about her. Her hair was partially grey, but it gave no appearance of age to the face, which had the appearance of one purified and refined from earthliness by long misfortune and trouble. She had lighted a number of candles, which encircled her with light, and was standing looking down into the box which was open on the table with a strange air of tremulous discovery, indecision, terror, and joy, like one who has found out some astonishing thing which she cannot believe yet knows to be true. She turned half round with a warning movement, as if begging not to be disturbed, then suddenly putting out her hand drew Agnes close to her. “What is that? Do you know what it is?” she said.
The only answer Agnes made was with a burst of tears: “Oh, Mary! Oh, my dear! my dear!” she cried.
A smile was on Mary’s face—a strange tender smile, full of all the softness of her veiled and gentle soul. She took out something tenderly and reverently, as if it had been a sacred thing. The curious nurse, peering behind these two absorbed women, expecting to see some mystery, felt herself to come down from imaginative poetic heights to the commonest familiar ground when she saw what it was. Ford almost laughed with the surprise, but dared not, so strong was the sensation of passionate feeling that seemed to fill the air. What Lady Frogmore took from the box was the first little garment that is ever put upon a child. A little film of lawn, not much more; the most delicate and softest of fabrics made to fold over the delicate body, in exquisite softness and whiteness, as if the finest fairy web of earth had been chosen to wrap the little thing new-born, come from among the angels. It was unfinished—a narrow line of very fine lace only half-sewn round the little sleeves. Mary took it up and held it in her hands, spread out upon them. Oh, what soft suggestions of trembling happiness, of wonderful anticipation, of tender mystery, and dreams were in it! “What is this?” she said, in a whisper; “tell me what it is.”
Agnes had put her arms round her sister, leaning upon her—she who was usually the strong one, the supporter and prop—and laid her head on Mary’s shoulder. The sight of the little tender relic, so familiar, so full of suggestion on this night of fate, overcame her altogether. Oh, to think of the infant for whom that little wrapper of softness had been made; whom his mother, who had made it with such holy and tender thoughts, had never known; who was lying now between life and death, perhaps having crossed the awful boundary lingering near them, breathing into her long-closed and stupefied heart. Agnes could make no answer. She sobbed convulsively upon her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, my baby, my boy, my little Mar, my little Mar!” she cried, with a poignant tone of anguish which pierced the soft air, the soft silence of the night, like something keen and terrible, a sharp blade and point of passionate human feeling.