The sun was very bright on that July morning. When should it be bright if not in that crown of summer? It triumphed over all the vain attempts of curtains drawn and shutters closed to keep it out, and streamed in in rays doubly intense for these precautions at every crevice. One of these resplendent rays fell upon the dress of the watcher who sat by Mar’s bedside. When he opened his eyes first this was what caught them. The dress was not the black dress and white apron of the nurse. It was grey, of a soft silvery tone, with a pattern woven in the silk, and a satin sheen which caught the light. Mar in the dreamy state of his weakness admired it like a child. How soft the color was, and the raised flowers which shone almost white in that wonderful ray of sunshine. His pleasure in it suited the dreamy state of feeble well-being in which he lay gradually getting awake. It seemed a kindness to put that pretty thing before him instead of the glare of the white apron on the gloom of the black gown. What was it, though, so near his bed?
He raised himself and beheld the most astonishing sight. Not the nurse at all with whose aspect he was so familiar, but a lady. Her face was shrouded by her hand, and for a moment he did not recognize her. A lady in those soft, beautiful robes, in an unfamiliar pose; not easy like the accustomed nurse, who was so kind but not anxious. This figure leaned forward looking at him, intent upon him, though he could not at first make out her face. Then he perceived the grey hair curling over the hand which supported her head, and then—He gave a little cry, “Ah!” which made her rise and come close to him. “Ah!” he said in his surprise; and then, with a curious, long drawn breath, “Am I dead?”
“Oh no, no.”
“I know: not dead, for I’m living and talking, but I must have died, I suppose? And—and you too?”
She came up, closer and closer, and took his hand, and began to cry, clasping it within her own. “Why should that be? Why should that be?” she said.
“Because,” said Mar, groping with his faint, half awakened senses and intelligence still in the strangest maze, “because—you are here.”
“Do you know me?”
He did not answer, but in those large, humid eyes of weakness the answer was so plain. Know you! they seemed to say; what do I know but you? Mary was touched to the heart. She dropped upon her knees by the bedside, and began to kiss his hand over and over. “I am your mother,” she said, and went on repeating those words as if they were something which he would not believe. “I am your mother—I am your mother.” They were a wonder to her, but no wonder to Mar. He smiled with the heavenly light in his eyes which belong to all, more or less, who have come back from the gates of death; and specially to the children when they are so good, so good, as to come back. Was there ever any mother but was thankful, oh, beyond telling, to her child for coming back? He looked at her with that angelic superiority of the newly returned, saying nothing. What could he say? He had known it all his life, but had never said a word. He had thought of her, dreamed of her, longed for her, but never had said a word. Had he died it would have been without a sign of that paramount dream and longing. He had never had any sense of wrong, only of wistful wishes and a lingering, never-quenched, always visionary hope. When Mar had made up his mind, as he had done very early, many years before, that he would die, he had felt a consolation in his childish mind from the thought. God would surely let him attend upon her, be her guardian angel, though he was so little. And then when she should die too—ah then! she would not fail to know him. It was this old childish thought so long cherished that made him think he must have died when he saw his mother for the first time by his bedside. But he was shy to utter that sacred word. He had dreamt of it so much, breathing it to himself like a melody which he alone had the secret of, that the thought of saying it aloud filled him with a strange trouble. And that she should kiss his hand, she! whose hem of her dress he would have been glad to kiss, troubled him; but to ask her to kiss him and not his hand, was something too bold, too hazardous to think of. He could only look at her, as he might have looked at the moment he had so often thought of, when he took her hand to lead her out of life, her guardian angel, and she recognized him in the light of heaven.
“I am your mother,” she kept saying. “Do you know me, do you know me?” laying her cheek upon his hand, kissing every wasted finger. Mary did not wait for any answer, perhaps she did not want it. It was enough for her to make her statement clear to him, to show him who she was. She had no fear of his affection, nor any compunction as if for guilt of her own towards him. None of these things troubled her mind. She was as if she had come home from a long absence, which by the most innocent natural causes had kept her separate from her boy. This was the way in which it seemed to affect her. She was not aware that she had been in fault or required forgiveness—or that there was any special harm or misfortune in it. She had arrived in time. That was the conviction warm at her heart. She had come in time. Her boy had been in danger, and she had arrived in time to save him. Had there been any sense in her mind of guilt towards him it would all have been driven away by this happy thought. She had been not a moment too late, exactly in time. Had she arrived earlier she might never have known the risk he ran, or the supreme need there was of her presence to protect him—and had she arrived late he might have been lost. She came by the providence of God exactly in time.
Agnes outside heard the murmur of the voices, and fearing she knew not what, that her sister might say too much and disturb the equilibrium of the patient at so important a moment, came stealing into the room to prevent any overstrain of emotion. Poor Agnes had been the only mother Mar had ever known. All that he knew of maternal love and tenderness was from her, and he was to her the most cherished thing in the world, the apple of her eye. But when she came in thus upon the pair she was not welcome to either. She was a disturbing influence, a third party. They did not want her. This is so often the fate of the third that she was not surprised, but it cannot be said that she liked it. It requires a quite celestial knowledge of the heart and charity for all its waywardness to enable one to see one’s self set aside and another preferred who has not done half so much to deserve that preference. Mar indeed hailed her more openly than he had done his mother, holding out his disengaged hand to her, drawing her nearer; but it was more as a witness of his blessedness than as the cause of any part of it. And Mary got up from her knees as her sister came in, as if now the intimate things of the heart must be put away, and the ordinary ones attended to. She bent over the bed and kissed his cheek, and then she returned to the cares of the nursing, which all this time had been laid aside.