Fanny had sunk back on her white pillows, upon the little couch before the window from which she watched for me. How inspired and beautiful she looked!—she who was never thought of as beautiful before,—the very transfigured likeness of herself, as I hope one day to behold her in glory,—and so like our mother, too! She lay still, as she had been ordered, lest she should faint again; but by the cheerful lamp that stood on the stand beside her, I saw her smile as she had never used to smile. The eyes, that I left swollen and downcast, were raised large and bright. But as she slowly opened her arms and clasped me to her, I felt tears on my cheek; and her voice was broken as she said, "Katy, Katy! O, thank God! I was afraid I never should see you again. Now I have everything that I want in the world!"
It was hard to leave her when I was called so soon; but she knew that it was right, and made me go; and when I was allowed to return to her, she lay in obedient but most happy silence for all the rest of the evening, with those new splendid eyes fixed on my face, her dim complexion glowing, and her hands clasping mine. After I had put her to bed, and laid myself down in my own beside her, I felt her reach out of hers and touch me with a little pat two or three times, as a child will a new doll, to make sure that it has not been merely dreaming of it. At first, I asked her if she wanted anything; but she said, "Only to feel that you are really there"; and when, after a very sound and long rest, I awoke, there was her solemn, peaceful gaze still watching me, like that of an unsleeping guardian angel. She had slept too, however, remarkably long and well, whether for joy, as she thought, or from the opium which I had been startled to see given her the night before. She said she had had many scruples about taking it; but the Doctor insisted; and she did not think it her duty on the whole to make him any trouble by opposing his prescriptions, when we owed him so much. Poor Fanny! How hard it was for her to owe any one "anything, but to love one another."
The Doctor's bulletin that morning was, "Remarkably comfortable." But in the forenoon, while Fanny after breakfast took a nap, I snatched an opportunity to cross-question Mrs. Physick, from whom I knew I could sooner or later obtain all she knew,—the sooner it would be, if she had anything good to tell; as, in my inexperience, I was almost sure she must have.
Fanny's "influenza," I now discovered, dated back to May. She kept her room a few days, did not seem so ill as many fellow-patients who were now quite well again, and soon resumed her usual habits, but was never quite rid of her cough. Two or three weeks after, there was a Sunday-school festival in the parish to which we belonged. She was called upon to sing and assist in various ways, over-tasked her strength, was caught in a shower, looked very sick, and being, on the strength of Mrs. Physick's representations, formally escorted into the office, was found to have a quick pulse and sharp pain in one side. This led to a careful examination of the chest, and the discovery not only of "acute pleurisy," but of "some mischief probably of longer standing in the lungs," yet "no more," the Doctor said, "than many people carried about with them all their lives without knowing it, nor than others, if circumstances brought it to light, recovered from by means of good care and good spirits, and lived to a good old age."
"How long ago was that?"
"The pleurisy? About the beginning of June. The Doctor said last week he 'could scarcely discover a vestige of it.' And now, Katy," continued kind, cheery Mrs. Physick, "you see, your coming back has put her in the best of spirits; and you and the Doctor and I are all going to take the best of care of her; and so we may all hope the best."
"The best of care"? Ah, there was little doubt of that! But even "good spirits"! who could hope to see Fanny enjoying them for any length of time, till she had done with time? Good, uncomplaining, patient, I had always seen her,—happy, how seldom!—when, indeed, till now? There was not enough of earth about her for her to thrive and bloom.
My mother, I believe, used to attribute in part to Fanny's early training her early joylessness. In her early days,—so at least I have understood,—it was thought right even by some good people of our "persuasion," to lose no opportunity of treating the little natural waywardnesses of children with a severity which would now be called ferocity. Mamma could never have practised this herself; but perhaps she suffered it to be practised to a greater extent than she would have consented to endure, had she foreseen the consequences. My poor father must have been inexperienced, too; and I suppose his nerves, between sickness and poverty, might at times be in such a state that he scarcely knew what he did.
I was four years younger than Fanny, and know nothing about it, except a very little at second-hand. But at any rate I have often heard my mother say, with a glance at her, and a gravity as if some sad association enforced the lesson on her mind, that it was one of the first duties of those who undertook the charge of children to watch over their cheerfulness, and a most important rule, never, if it was possible to put it off, so much as to reprimand them when one's own balance was at all disturbed. This was a rule that she never to my knowledge broke; though she was naturally rather a high-strung person, as I think the pleasantest and most generous people one meets with generally are.
From whatever cause or causes,—to return to Fanny,—she grew up, not fierce, sullen, nor yet hypocritical, but timid and distrustful, miserably sensitive and anxious, and morbidly conscientious.