“She is worrying her life out,” Eleanora said pityingly. “I don’t believe she eats properly.” And taking more trouble for a poor person than she had ever done before, she wrote to the housekeeper at Errickdale to send Bridget O’Rourke every day substantial and tempting food enough for an entire meal. Then she dismissed the whole matter; or rather the dressmaker was announced, and the important
question as to whether her balldress should be of velvet or satin drove all minor subjects, such as hunger and cold and nakedness, from her mind.
Meanwhile, Bridget strove to calm her father’s wrath, which he poured forth volubly as the train carried them home; and when he was still, she thought out to its full scope the plan which had occurred to her. She would go to the ball, and, when the guests were assembled, she would step forth from her hiding-place, and stand before them all, and plead the people’s cause. But the more she thought of it the more her heart misgave her. Why should she hope they would heed her then rather than to-day? Would not the master only be the more incensed against his miners, because of the shame to which he would be exposed? Yes, she felt sure that this would be the result. And then the long, long days and weeks which must elapse before the chance would come at all! How could she endure it? She put that sudden hope and plan away. Instead of it, she prayed again and again with smothered sobs: “O Christ! who for love of us died for us, save thy people now.”
But she walked the long walk home from Teal station without fatigue, and came into Errickdale strong and well, to meet the woes she yearned to heal. The children had learned to understand her pity for them. They welcomed her return with cries for food; she gave them what she could, and lay down supperless herself that night to rest. After that, each day brought her a full meal from the great house, but she never tasted of it; there were those who needed it more, she said.
Once, on her way to a poor family
with a basket of these provisions, the smell of the well-cooked food produced such a violent craving that it seemed to her for a moment that she should go mad. With a great effort she controlled herself and stood still. “Christ,” she prayed, “have mercy! Shall I eat dainties while the children starve?”
The craving did not cease, but strength to resist it came. She entered the wretched room to which she was bound, and fed the inmates who crowded around her; then she hurried home. In the cupboard were a few crusts and a bone already well picked. How sweetly they tasted! And while she feasted on them a woman crawled feebly in. “I’ve fasted long,” she said, and quietly Bridget gave her all she had.
Twice afterward she felt that horrible craving, and then it ceased. Her father saw that she ate little, but never guessed how little it really was; he saw that she grew pinched and pale, but fancied it was grief alone that caused it. He did not know, and no one knew, that, with what Errickdale counted “plenty” at her command, Bridget was living like the poorest. The thirst for self-sacrifice, the thirst of a supernatural love, consumed her. “He did it,” she used to say to herself. “He was poor for us, and he died for us.” From her room one by one her possessions departed; she carried them to those who, as she thought, needed them more, or she disposed of them for their use. Soon the attic room, which no one but herself ever entered, held literally nothing but the crucifix on the wall. Laying her weary limbs on the hard floor at night, she thought of the hard cross whereon her Lord had died. “Mine is an easier bed than his,” she said, and smiled in the darkness.
“May he make me worthier to share his blessed pains!”
But the nights were few that she spent on even so poor a couch as this. There was sickness in Errickdale as well as want, and Bridget was nurse, and doctor, and servant, and watcher beside the dead. And in her princess life at Malton Eleanora Rossetti counted the same long hours blithely, eager for her festival to come.