“Pshaw! what does it matter getting wet?” she returned, with a little scorn; but nevertheless she suffered Phillis to take her arm and draw her gently towards the house. Only as they came near the library window, she pointed to it indignantly. “Who has dared to enter that room, or open the window! Have I not forbidden over and over again that that room should be used? Do you think,” she continued, in the same excited way, “that I would enter that room to-night of all nights! 201 Why, I should hear his angry voice pealing in every corner! It was a good room for echoes; and he could speak loudly if he chose. Come away! there is a door I always use that leads to my private apartments. I am no recluse; but in these moods I do not care to show myself to people. If you are not afraid, you may come with me, unless you prefer Miss Mewlstone’s company.”
“I would rather go with you,” returned Phillis, gently. She could not in truth say she was not afraid; but all the same she must try and soothe the poor creature who was evidently enduring such torments of mind: so she followed in silence up the broad oak staircase.
A green-baize door admitted them into a long and somewhat narrow corridor, lighted up by a row of high narrow windows set prettily with flower-boxes. Here there were several doors. Mrs. Cheyne paused before one a moment.
“Look here! you shall see the mysteries of the west wing. This is my world; downstairs I am a different creature—taciturn, harsh, and prone to sarcasm. Ask Mr. Drummond what he thinks of me; but I never could endure a good young man—especially that delicious compound of the worldling and the saint—like the Reverend Archibald. See here, my dear: here I am never captious or say naughty things!”
She threw open the door, and softly beckoned to Phillis to enter. It was a large empty room,—evidently a nursery. Some canaries were twittering faintly in a gilded cage. There were flowers in the two windows, and in the vases on the table: evidently some loving hands had arranged them that very morning. A large rocking-horse occupied the centre of the floor: a doll lay with its face downwards on the crimson carpet; a pile of wooden soldiers strutted on their zigzag platform,—one or two had fallen off; a torn picture-book had been flung beside them.
“That was my Janie’s picture-book,” said Mrs. Cheyne, mournfully: “she was teaching her doll out of it just before she was taken ill. Nothing was touched; by a sort of inspiration,—a foreboding,—I do not know what,—I bade nurse leave the toys as they were. ‘It is only an interrupted game: let the darlings find their toys as they put them,’ I said to her that morning. Look at the soldiers, Bertie was always for soldiers,—bless him!”
Her manner had grown calmer; and she spoke with such touching tenderness that tears came to Phillis’s eyes. But Mrs. Cheyne never once looked at the girl; she lingered by the table a moment, adjusting a leaf here and a bud there in the bouquets, and then she opened an inner door leading to the night-nursery. Here the associations were still more harrowing. The cots stood side by side under a muslin canopy, with an alabaster angel between them; the little night-dresses lay folded on the pillows; on each quilt were the scarlet dressing-gown and the 202 pair of tiny slippers; the clothes were piled neatly on two chairs,—a boy’s velvet tunic on one, a girl’s white frock, a little limp and discolored, hung over the rails of the other.
“Everything just the same,” murmured the poor mother. “Look here, my dear,”—with a faint smile—“these are Bertie’s slippers: there is the hole he kicked in them when he was in his tempers, for my boy had the Cheyne temper. He was Herbert’s image,—his very image.” She sighed, paused, and went on: “Every night I come and sit beside their beds, and then the darlings come to me. I can see their faces—oh, so plainly!—and hear their voices. ‘Good-night, dear mamma!’ they seem to say to me, only Bertie’s voice is always the louder.”
Her manner was becoming a little excited again; only Phillis took her hand and pressed it gently, and the touch seemed to soothe her like magic.
“I am so glad you come here every night,” she said, in her sweet, serious voice, from which every trace of fear had gone. “I think that a beautiful idea, to come and say your prayers beside one of these little beds.”