A few minutes afterwards, having been persuaded by Everard to rest herself on the sofa, to recover the effects of the agitation his indiscreet communication had excited, she suddenly complained of cold, and begged him to close the windows. It was a balmy April day, with a genial sun shining fresh into the room. The air was as the air of midsummer—one of those days on which you almost see the small green leaves of spring bursting from their shelly covering, and the resinous buds of the chestnut-trees expanding into maturity. Poor Everard saw at once that the chilliness of which his wife complained must be the effect of illness. More cautious, however, on this occasion than before, he enquired, as her shivering increased, what preparations she had made for the events which still left her some weeks for execution. "None. His sisters had kindly undertaken to supply her with all she might require; and the services of the nurse accustomed to attend his married sister, were engaged on her behalf. At the end of the month this woman was to arrive at Lexley, bringing with her the wardrobe of the little treasure who was to accord renewed peace and happiness to its mother."
Though careful to conceal his anxiety from his wife, Everard Sparks, disappointed and distressed, quitted the room in haste to send for the medical man who had long been the attendant of his family. But before he arrived, the shivering fit of the poor sufferer had increased to an alarming degree. A calming potion was administered, and orders issued that she was to be kept quiet; but in the consternation created in the little household by the communication Dr R. thought it necessary to make of the possibility of a premature confinement, poor Mrs Sparks's maid, a young inexperienced woman, dispatched a messenger to my house for her old kinswoman, and it was through Barbara I became acquainted with the melancholy incidents I am about to relate.
The sedatives administered failed in their effect. A fatal shock had been already given; and while struggling through that direful night with the increasing pangs that verified the doctor's prognostications, the sympathizing women around the sufferer could scarcely restrain their tears at the courage with which she supported her anguish, rejoicing in it, as it were, in the prospect of embracing her child—when all present were aware that the compensation was about to be denied her, that the child was already dead. Just as the day dawned, her anxious husband was congratulated on her safety, and then the truth could no longer be concealed from Mary. She asked to see her babe. Her husband was employed to persuade her to defer seeing it for an hour or two, "till it was dressed—till she was more composed." But the truth rushed into her mind, and she uttered not another word, in the apprehension of increasing his disappointment and mortification.
So long did her silence continue, that, trusting she had fallen asleep, old Barbara's granddaughter entreated poor Everard to withdraw and leave her to her rest. But the moment he quitted the room, she spoke, spoke resolutely, and in a firmer voice than her previous sufferings had given them reason to suppose possible.
"Now, then, let me see my boy," said she. "I know that he is dead. But do not be afraid of shocking or distressing me. I have courage to look upon the poor little creature for whom I have suffered so much, and who, I trusted, would reward me for all."
The women remonstrated, as it was their duty to remonstrate. But when they saw that opposition on this point only excited her, dreading an accession of fever, they brought the poor babe and laid it on the pillow beside its mother. That first embrace, to which she had looked forward with such intensity of delight, folded to her burning bosom only a clay-cold child!
Even thus it was fair to look on—every promise in its little form, that its beauty would have equalled that of its handsome parents; and Mary, as she pressed her lips to its icy forehead, fancied she could trace on those tiny features a resemblance to its father. Old Barbara, perceiving how bitterly the tears of the sufferer were falling on the cheeks of her lost treasure, now interfered. But the mother had still a last request to make. A few downy curls were perceptible on the temples—in colour and fineness resembling her own. She wished to rescue from the grave this slight remembrance of her poor nameless offspring; and her wish having been complied with, she suffered the babe to be taken from her relaxed and moveless grasp.
"Leave me the hair," said she, in a faint voice. "Thanks—thanks! I am happy now—I will try to sleep—I am happy—happy now!"
She slept—and never woke again. At the close of an hour or two, her anxious husband, finding she had not stirred, gently and silently approached the bedside, and took into his own the fair hand lying on the coverlid, to ascertain whether fever had ensued. Fever? It was already cold with the damps of death!
Imagine, if you can, the agony and self-reproach of that bereaved man! Again and again did he revile himself as her murderer; accusing himself—her father—her sister—the whole world. At one moment, he fancied that her condition had not been properly treated by her attendants; at another, that the medical man ought not to have left the house. Nay, hours and hours after she was gone for ever—after the undertakers had commenced their hideous preparations—even while she lay stretched before him, white and cold as marble, he persisted that life might be still recalled; and, but for the better discrimination of those around him, would have insisted on attempts at resuscitation, calculated only to disturb, almost sacrilegiously, the sound peace of the dead!