A HEROINE OF TO-DAY.
We had watched with her alternate nights throughout all her illness, but this night we thought would be her last, and neither of us was willing to leave her. The surgeons and nurses had gone, and we were at last alone. We sat through the remaining hours in deathly stillness, occasionally moistening the lips and tongue of the sufferer. It was the last office of friendship, and I yielded it, though reluctantly, to her earliest and dearest friend. Monotonous the hours were, but not long. We would have made them longer if we could, for though the waning life before us was but the faintest shadow of the life we had companioned with, we were loath to lose it—to face the blank that would be left when it was gone.
One, two, three o'clock sounded, and still no perceptible change; but soon after the breathing became shorter, a slight film gathered on her eyes, and we stood in the presence of the last great mystery. Shorter and shorter grew the breath, deeper and deeper the film, till, just as the first gray light showed itself in the eastern horizon, came the last sigh, and Mrs. Simmons, leaning forward, exclaimed in a low voice, 'It is over.' As for me, I buried my face in the pillow and wept unrestrainedly.
In a hospital the day treads closely on the night, and soon the morning came. We retired to our apartment for rest, but we could not sleep. We could only think of our loss, and after an hour or two we rose, somewhat rested, but not refreshed. Ever since my first acquaintance with Laetitia Sunderland, I had eagerly desired to learn her previous life. Glimpses of it I had obtained, but I wanted it as a whole, and now I was with one, perhaps for the last time, who could give me a full account of it. It was an opportunity not to be lost, and while partaking of our morning coffee, I asked Mrs. Simmons if she would tell me what I so longed to know. She willingly assented, and as I was relieved from duty for the day, and the morning was mild and beautiful, we sought a rustic seat in the garden, and there in a little nook retired from view, I heard the story of that life to which my own during the past year had been so closely knit.
'There is one thing,' said Mrs. Simmons, 'in regard to our friend, to which we have never alluded, and which, perhaps, you would rather have me now pass over; but on that very thing her whole character and history turn, and to omit it would leave nothing worth the telling—I mean her personal appearance.
'When I was a child, my parents moved into the suburbs of Condar, and as there were no houses between ours and Mr. Sunderland's, the two families soon became well acquainted. On the day that I was ten years old, my mother told me there was a baby girl at Mrs. Sunderland's, and said she would take me to see it. I was delighted, and wanted to go immediately, but mother said I must wait till to-morrow. To-morrow came, and I was sick; and at last the baby was a week old when I was taken, the happiest little mortal in existence, into that upper room where the little one lay in its nurse's arms. I looked at it, and then at my mother.'
"What is the matter, Mary?' said she.
"It isn't a very pretty baby, is it, mother?'
"Oh it will grow prettier," said my mother, and with that I was satisfied. I was extravagantly fond of babies, and this one I adopted as my especial care, for there was no other in the neighborhood; and besides, in my childish confusion of ideas, I supposed we were twins, our birthdays being the same.
'From the time Laetitia first learned to speak, she came to me with all her troubles and her interests, and I was always glad to be her sympathizer, her counsellor, and her playmate. When she was five or six years old she went to the nearest district school. She was always a marked girl, from her extreme homeliness, her excellent scholarship, her boldness in all active sports, and an odd humor which never failed to interest and amuse. My mother's prophecy, alas! was not fulfilled. She grew no prettier, but rather the reverse. She was the same in childhood as when you knew her, with the high, bold forehead, crowned with white, towy hair, small greenish-gray eyes, shaded and yet not shaded with light yellowish eyelashes, short and thin; scanty eyebrows of the same color; a nose so small and flat it seemed scarcely a projection from her face; teeth tolerably good, but chin and mouth receding in a peculiar manner, and very disagreeably; and a thick, waxy complexion, worse in childhood than of late years, for the spirit had not then found its way through it, as it did afterward. Moreover, by a singular malignancy of fortune, when she was twelve years old, she was attacked with varioloid, and taking a severe cold as she was getting well, had a relapse, and was left as you see her, not closely marked, but sufficiently pitted to attract attention.