“Don’t speak to her or make her talk. That is all,” she said.
Goddard entered the sick-room on tiptoe. At the door Emily met him on her way out, and whispered a caution not to stay too long. He went to the bedside. Lizzie was lying very still and white. The flesh had left her cheeks; they were pinched, her features sharp, the skin drawn away tight against the bones. Her colourless lips hung loose; her teeth were prominent—a death’s head rather than a living woman. Goddard was shocked to the heart. He scarcely recognised her. Not only did he fail to see in her any traces of the girl he had once thought to love, but also she was no longer the woman he had hated.
“So you’ve come,” she whispered, moving a feeble hand.
He took it in his, tried to smile to reassure her. Her lips moved again.
“Won’t you kiss me?”
Her voice had not changed. It lessened the strange sense of unfamiliarity with which he had been regarding her. There was an involuntary touch of peevishness in the tone. He bent down and kissed her cheek.
“Make haste and get well, Lizzie,” he said in a low voice.
She seemed satisfied with this, for she half closed her eyes, and let her hand slip from his on to the counterpane. Daniel sat down in the chair facing the small table by the bedside, on which were a bottle of medicine and glass, a bunch of violets in water, and her Bible. This last was a beautifully bound volume, edged with brass, and closed with a heavy clasp. Daniel had given it to her in the early days of their marriage, when she was eager to surround herself with all the obvious essentials of gentility. He had learned lately from Emily’s chatter how she had insisted upon this Bible being placed near her. “As if the Holy Book could charm away the other things,” Emily had said in an awed tone.
The sight of it carried his thoughts back. Only once before had he sat by her side like this—in this very room, too. She had been very white and still then, but young and fresh, with gladness in her eyes that had awakened within him an answering thrill. And there had been a little wee pink thing at her breast. It had fluffy black down on its head, he remembered. In this room, too, it had died three years later of diphtheria. The room’s associations grew upon him. It was here that he had first come by the knowledge of the curse of her life. She was lying speechless one evening on the bed. He had bent over her unsuspectingly, and then started back with a horrible spasm of disgust. Involuntarily now he raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. His fancy seemed to read in them the lingering horrors through which she had passed. He shuddered, thanked God that the child had died. The hereditary poison must have lurked in its young veins.
To shake off these thoughts he rose, stirred the fire into a blaze, and returned to his seat. Then, moved by compunction—for this was a visit of forgiveness—he stretched out his arm and smoothed the back of her hand. A look of gratefulness appeared on her face, and she closed her eyes again. Daniel’s heart softened a little towards her.