“Flee this moment,” cried the Mistress, pushing this latter to the door, “and bring in the first man you can meet to carry him to his bed—that’s what you’re to do—and, Katie, Katie, whisht, dinna vex him—he canna speak to you. Keep up your heart—we’ll get him to his bed, and we’ll get the doctor, and he’ll come round.”
Katie lifted up her woeful white face to the Mistress—the poor girl did not say a word—did not even utter a sob or shed a tear. Her eyes said only, “it has come! it has come!” The blow which she had been trembling for had fallen at last. And the Mistress, who was not given to tokens of affection, stooped down in the deep pity of her heart and kissed Katie’s forehead. There was nothing to be said. This sudden calamity was beyond the reach of speech.
They got the sufferer conveyed to his room and laid on his bed a few minutes after, and within a very short time the only medical aid which the neighborhood afforded was by the bed-side. But medical aid could do little for the minister—he was old, and had long been growing feeble, and nobody wondered to hear that he had suffered “a stroke,” and that there was very, very little hope of his recovery. The old people in Kirkbride clustered together, speaking of it with that strange, calm curiosity of age, which always seems rather to congratulate itself that some one else is the present sufferer, yet is never without the consciousness that itself may be the next. A profound sympathy, reverence, and compassion was among all the villagers—passive towards Dr. Logan, active to Katie, the guardian and mother of the little household of orphans who soon were to have no other guardian. They said to each other, “God help her!” in her youth and loneliness—what was she to do?
As for the Mistress, she was not one of those benevolent neighbors who share in the vigils of every sick room, and have a natural faculty for nursing. To her own concentrated individual temper, the presence of strangers in any household calamity was so distasteful, that she could scarcely imagine it acceptable to others; and she never offered services which she would not have accepted. But there was neither offer nor acceptance now. The Mistress sent word at once to Marget, took off her bonnet, and without a word to any one, took her place in the afflicted house. Even now she was but little in the sick chamber.
“If he kens her, he’ll like best to see Katie—and if he doesna ken her, it’ll aye be a comfort to herself,” said the Mistress. “I’ll take the charge of every thing else—- but his ain bairn’s place is there.”
“I only fear,” said the doctor, “that the poor thing will wear herself out.”
“She’s young, and she’s a good bairn,” said the Mistress, “and she’ll have but one father, if she lives ever so long a life. I’m no feared. No, doctor, dinna hinder Katie; if she wears herself out, poor bairn, she’ll have plenty of sad time to rest in. Na, I dinna grudge her watching; she doesna feel it now, and it’ll be a comfort to her a’ her life.”
It was, perhaps, a new doctrine to the country doctor; but he acknowledged the truth of it, and the Mistress, wise in this, left Katie to that mournful, silent, sick room, where the patient lay motionless and passive in the torpor of paralysis, perhaps conscious, it was hard to know—but unable to communicate a word of all that might be in his heart. The children below, hushed and terror-stricken, had never been under such strict rule, yet never had known so many indulgences all their lives before; and the Mistress took her night’s rest upon the sofa, wrapped in a shawl and morning gown, ready to start in an instant, should she be called; but she did not disturb the vigil of the daughter by her father’s bed-side.
And Katie, absorbed by her own sorrows, hardly noticed—hardly knew—this characteristic delicacy. She sat watching him with an observation so intent, that she almost fancied she could see his breath, watching the dull, gray eyes, half closed and lustreless, to note if, perhaps, a wandering light of expression might kindle in them; watching the nerveless, impotent hands, if perhaps, motion might be restored to them; watching the lips, lest they should move, and she might lose the chance of guessing at some word. There was something terrible, fascinating, unearthly in the task; he was there upon the bed, and yet he was not there, confined in a dismal speechless prison, to which perhaps—they could not tell—their own words and movements might penetrate, but out of which nothing could come. His daughter sat beside him, looking forward with awe into the blank solemnity of the future. No mother, no father; only the little dependent children, who had but herself to look to. She went over and over again the very same ground. Orphans, and desolate; her thoughts stopped there, and went no further. She could not help contemplating the terrible necessity before her; but she could not make plans while her father lay there, speechless yet breathing, in her sight.
She was sitting thus, the fourth day after his seizure, gazing at him; the room was very still—the blinds were down—a little fire burned cheerfully in the grate—her eyes were fixed upon his eyes, watching them, and as she watched it seemed to Katie that her father’s look turned towards a narrow, ruddy, golden arrow of sunshine, which streamed in at the side of the window. She rose hastily and went up to the bed. Then his lips began to move—she bent down breathlessly; God help her!—he spoke, and she was close to his faltering lips; but all Katie’s strained and agonizing senses could not tell a word of what he meant to say. What matter? His eyes were not on her, but on the sunshine—the gleam of God’s boundless light coming in to the chamber of mortality—his thoughts were not with her in her sore youthful trouble. He was as calm as an angel, lying there in the death of his old age and the chill of his faculties. But she—she was young, she was desolate, she was his child—her heart cried out in intolerable anguish, and would not be satisfied. Could it be possible? Would he pass away with those moving lips, with that faint movement of a smile, and she never know what he meant to say?