“Ah, you know me well, Bertram,” said Dolores, with a half-sad smile.
Bertram waited in silence.
“Well, up to a point, I think it may be a promise you have a right to exact,” she said. “I promise never to disclose what you have told me to-night, as long as my silence does not involve — seem to me to involve — an injury, or anything that I consider an injury, to any human being.”
Chapter VIII
“No, no; read more slowly, Sigismund. I cannot follow what it means. You used not to read to me so quickly.”
There was a querulous, quavering note in the aged tones. The last days of the many which Janet Claverhouse had seen, had carried a change. That which sorrow had failed, and the ills of the flesh had spared to bring, was wrought by the surer force of days. The grasshopper had become a burden, and filial tendance was an added weariness.
With the sound of the feeble voice, the son slackened and lowered his tones; but before he had turned the page, it broke in again.
“No, no; I do not hear, Sigismund. You read in a whisper. You can shut the book; I will not listen any more. You do not try to make it easy for me. I am old; and you do not care to help me any longer.”
Claverhouse laid down the book he had been holding closely to his eyes, and placed his hand on the shrunken fingers on the coverlet.
“My dear old mother!” he said.
Janet’s eyes filled with the easy tears of bodily weakness.
“I am old, and complaining, and you do not care for me,” she said with faint sobs. “But I shall not be with you much longer. You will soon be rid of the burden of me. But when you were helpless, I never thought you were a burden.”
Claverhouse moved his hand and was silent; and the aged creature saw that the wounding power of the words of her feebleness could not be deadened by their helpless utterance.
“Ah! I am an ungrateful old woman,” she said, as if half-speaking her own thoughts, half-quoting those she judged to be her son’s. “I expect too much of every one. I expect them to bear with me, and suffer with me from morning till night, and give them nothing in return but more to bear with. It will be a good thing when I am gone, and my son can live his own life without the burden.”
Claverhouse was still silent. This prostration of the vital creature, he had honoured through the years as her who had borne him, in the aged weakness of other women, was a grief with a subtle bitterness. He could almost find it in him to wish, that the end had come some seven years earlier, in a sickness which had stricken her first feebleness, and given in its passing a new hold on life.
“My dear little mother!” he said at last, taking the tiny hand. “Weakness and weariness are hard for a spirit such as yours. But endurance, as other things, grows great in you. You need not doubt me. I know when it is weakness speaking, and when it is yourself.”
Janet shed a few more tears, but of a quieter kind which brought a calmer mood; and then lay back on her pillows, and presently passed into sleep. The son sat by her chair, with his face towards her, but his eyes looking into space. He was sitting thus, when the door of the chamber opened, and Julia entered with a covered cup in her hand. Her look of venerating tenderness at the face on the pillow was followed by another that spoke of deeper things, as her master yielded her his seat and stole from the room. It was not till the uneven, heavy tread on the stairs was succeeded by the sound of the upper door and silence, that the expression of listening eagerness died on her face, and she seated herself to await the end of the sleep, that checked her tendance. The light slumber of age was readily broken by the change in the ministering presence. Janet awoke, and rested her eyes on the watcher at her side. After a moment she suddenly staggered to her feet, and took some struggling steps, as though continuing in action the experience of her dreaming. A gesture of her hand towards the floor above, and the movements of her lips and limbs, showed that her purpose was the old pilgrimage to the door of her son. Julia checked her gently; laid her back on the pillows, and soothed and fed her. She received the ministrations in a silence that told of inner weariness, broken by words in which complaining and gratitude were mingled. But she seemed to gain strength from the food as she swallowed it; and when the cup was set aside, her talking gladdened the humble, waiting heart with its shadowing of the old self. A colour rose to her shrunken cheeks as she spoke. It was of her son that she talked, and her desires for his comfort when her mother’s care should be lost to him. Her voice seemed to lose its high-pitched quaver, and regain its old deep tone. But she appeared to be agitated; and more than once repeated herself unwittingly, or stumbled over her words. Julia perceived the signs of change, but could not interpret their certain message; and when she sank into sleep, left her without uneasiness.
In the upper chamber the son, in the mood of emotional ardour, which was brought him by grief in greatness, but held from begetting wrestling of spirit by its birth in the workings of nature and days, was living in a world of his own; with no knowledge of the moments, and his senses closed to the things that touched them.
A feeble, limping footfall, growing slower and feebler with its steps, fell on his ear to stir no response in his mind, save a slumbering power of remembrance. A sound of a fall, and a long, feeble, guttural cry, mingled with the other dim impression, and wrought no further; till other sounds — another footstep, and another cry — awakened perception and memory, with the fear they brought. He rushed from his room; and on the staircase there met his sight the scene which his moment of dread had painted. He pushed the trembling Julia aside; and taking up the weightless form, bore it to the lower room, and laid it on the bed. The eyes were closed, and the limbs drooping; but something in the face showed that the mind was awake. It was the hour for the doctor’s daily coming; and the chance was well; for the man’s strong limbs were trembling. He turned to Julia with his breath quickened.
“How dared you leave her, without fetching me to watch her?” he said.
“I was getting the supper. The work had to be done. We always do leave her when she sleeps. I never do disturb you — she will not have it. O, my dear, my dear!” sobbed the old servant, kneeling by the bed.
“How came she to go to the staircase?” said Claverhouse, leaning against the wall for support. “It is years since she has been there alone. She must have been wandering; but, even so, how did it come to her mind?”
The eyes of the aged woman opened, and turned to Julia’s face; and one tiny, shrunken hand made a gesture pitifully imperious in its bare achievement. Julia had raised her head to speak; but she bent it at once — the last office of her long obedience, — and wringing her hands, continued sobbing. The doctor’s entrance brought silence, and the words that were awaited and dreaded.
“Yes, it was the end. The fall on the stairs was due to a kind of paralytic spasm. It was possible there had been some wandering of mind. The cause of all was age. There was nothing to be done save quiet watching and tendance as long as they were needed.”
And they were not needed long. A spell of unconsciousness followed; and in the early hours of the morning the final stillness came. For the farewell of the mother and the son there was no word spoken; but Julia, in her daily dwelling on the last knowing moment, knew — though in the silence of the loyalty that did not die with death — that the years of selfless service had had no unfitting end.