“This is too much!” observed Mrs. Cheyne, rising in serious displeasure. She had almost a masculine abhorrence to tears of late years; the very sight of them excited her strangely.
“Miss Challoner may keep her mysteries to herself if she likes, but I insist on knowing what has upset you like this.”
“Oh dear! oh, dear!” sobbed the simple woman, wringing her hands helplessly. “This is just too much for me! Poor soul, how am I to tell her?” And then she looked at Phillis in affright at her own words, which revealed so much and so little.
Mrs. Cheyne turned exceedingly pale, and a shadow passed over her face.
“‘Poor soul!’ does she mean me? Is it of me you are speaking, Barby? Is there something for me to know, that you dread to tell me? Poor soul, indeed!” And then her features contracted and grew pinched. “But you need not be afraid. Is it not the Psalmist who says, ‘All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me’? Drowned people have nothing to fear: there is no fresh trouble for them.” And her eyes took an awful stony look that terrified Phillis.
“Oh, it is no fresh trouble!” stammered the girl. “People are not tormented like that: they have not to suffer more than they can bear.” 260
But Mrs. Cheyne turned upon her fiercely:
“You are wrong, altogether wrong. I could not bear it, and it drove me mad,—at least as nearly mad as a sane woman could be. I felt my reason shaken; my brain was all aflame, and I cried out to heaven for mercy; and a blank answered me. Barby, if there be fresh trouble, tell me instantly, and at once. What do I care? What is left to me, but a body that will not die, and a brain that will not cease to think? If I could only stop the thoughts! if I could only go down into silence and nothingness! but then I should not find Herbert and the children. Where are they? I forget!” She stopped, pressed her hands to her brow with a strange bewildered expression; but Miss Mewlstone crept up to her, and touched her timidly.
“My bonnie Magdalene!” she exclaimed; “don’t let the ill thoughts come; drive them away, my poor dear. Look at me. Did old Barby ever deceive you? There is no fresh trouble, my pretty. In his own good time the All-Merciful has had mercy!”
Mrs. Cheyne’s hand dropped down to her sides, but her brilliant eyes showed no comprehension of her words.