The Shadow of Ashlydyat Part 23

The ready tears came into her eyes. "It does ache very much," she answered.

"Has crying caused it?"

"Yes," she replied. "It is of no use to deny it, for you would see it by my swollen eyelids. I have wept to-day until it seems that I can weep no longer, and it has made my eyes ache and my head dull and heavy."

"But, my darling, you should not give way to this grief. It may render you seriously ill."

"Oh, Thomas! how can I help it?" she returned, with emotion, as the tears dropped swiftly over her cheeks. "We begin to see that there is no chance of Sarah Anne's recovery. Mr. Snow told mamma so to-day: and he sent up Mr. Hastings."

"Ethel, will your grieving alter it?"

Ethel wept silently. There was full and entire confidence between her and Thomas G.o.dolphin: she could speak out all her thoughts, her troubles to him, as she could have told them to a mother--if she had had a mother who loved her.

"If she were only a little more prepared to go, the pain would seem less," breathed Ethel. "That is, we might feel more reconciled to losing her. But you know what she is, Thomas. When I have tried to talk a little bit about heaven, or to read a psalm to her, she would not listen: she said it made her dull, it gave her the horrors. How can she, who has never thought of G.o.d, be fit to meet Him?"

Ethel's tears were deepening into sobs. Thomas G.o.dolphin involuntarily thought of what Mr. Hastings had just said to him. His hand still rested on Ethel's head.

"_You_ are fit to meet Him?" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Ethel, whence can have arisen the difference between you? You are sisters; reared in the same home."

"I do not know," said Ethel simply. "I have always thought a great deal about heaven; I suppose it is that. A lady, whom we knew as children, used to buy us a good many story-books, and mine were always stories of heaven. It was that which first got me into the habit of thinking of it."

"And why not Sarah Anne?"

"Sarah Anne would not read them. She liked stories of gaiety and excitement; b.a.l.l.s, and things like that."

Thomas smiled; the words were so simple and natural. "Had the fiat gone forth for you, instead of for her, Ethel, it would have brought you no dismay?"

"Only that I must leave all my dear ones behind me," she answered, looking up at him, a bright smile s.h.i.+ning through her tears. "I should know that G.o.d would not take me, unless it were for the best. Oh, Thomas! if we could only save her!"

"Child, you contradict yourself. If what G.o.d does must be for the best--and it _is_--that thought should reconcile you to parting with Sarah Anne."

"Y--es," hesitated Ethel. "Only I fear she has never thought of it herself, or in any way prepared for it."

"Do you know that I have to find fault with you?" resumed Thomas G.o.dolphin, after a pause. "You have not been true to me, Ethel."

She turned her eyes upon him in surprise.

"Did you not promise me--did you not promise Mr. Snow, not to enter your sister's chamber while the fever was upon her? I hear that you were in it often: her head nurse."

A hot colour flushed into Ethel's face. "Forgive me, Thomas," she whispered; "I could not help myself. Sarah Anne--it was on the third morning of her illness, when I was getting up--suddenly began to cry out for me very much, and mamma came to my bedroom and desired me to go to her. I said that Mr. Snow had forbidden me, and that I had promised you.

It made mamma angry. She asked if I could be so selfish as to regard a promise before Sarah Anne's life; that she might die if I thwarted her: and she took me by the arm and pulled me in. I would have told you, Thomas, that I had broken my word; I wished to tell you; but mamma forbade me to do so."

Thomas G.o.dolphin stood looking at her. There was nothing to answer: he had _known_, in his deep and trusting love, that the fault had not lain with Ethel. She mistook his silence, thinking he was vexed.

"You know, Thomas, so long as I am here in mamma's home, her child, it is to her that I owe obedience," she gently pleaded. "As soon as I shall be your wife, I shall owe it and give it implicitly to you."

"You are right, my darling."

"And it has produced no ill consequences," she resumed. "I did not catch the fever. Had I found myself growing in the least ill, I should have sent for you and told you the truth."

"Ethel?" he impulsively cried--very impulsively for calm Thomas G.o.dolphin; "had you caught the fever, I should never have forgiven those who led you into danger. I _could_ not lose you."

"Hark!" said Ethel. "Mamma is calling."

Lady Sarah had been calling to Mr. G.o.dolphin. Thinking she was not heard, she now came downstairs and entered the room, wringing her hands; her eyes were overflowing, her sharp thin nose was redder than usual.

"Oh dear! I don't know what we shall do with her!" she uttered. "She is so ill, and it makes her so fretful. Mr. G.o.dolphin, nothing will satisfy her now but she must see you."

"See me!" repeated he.

"She will, she says. I told her you were departing for Scotland, and she burst out crying, and said if she were to die she should never see you again. Do you mind going in? You are not afraid?"

"No, I am not afraid," said Thomas G.o.dolphin. "Infection cannot have remained all this time. And if it had, I should not fear it."

Lady Sarah Grame led the way upstairs. Thomas followed her. Ethel stole in afterwards. Sarah Anne lay in bed, her thin face, drawn and white, raised upon the pillow; her hollow eyes were strained forward with a fixed look. Ill as he had been led to suppose her, he was scarcely prepared to see her like this; and it shocked him. A cadaverous face, looking ripe for the tomb.

"Why have you never come to see me?" she asked in her hollow voice, as he approached and leaned over her. "You'd never have come till I died.

You only care for Ethel."

"I would have come to see you had I known you wished it," he answered.

"But you do not look strong enough to receive visitors."

"They might cure me, if they would," she continued, panting for breath.

"I want to go away somewhere, and that Snow won't let me. If it were Ethel, he would take care to cure _her_."

"He will let you go as soon as you are equal to it, I am sure," said Thomas G.o.dolphin.

"Why should the fever have come to me at all?--Why couldn't it have gone to Ethel instead? She's strong. She would have got well in no time. It's not fair----"

"My dear child, my dear, dear child, you must not excite yourself,"

implored Lady Sarah, abruptly interrupting her.

"I shall speak," cried Sarah Anne, with a touch, feeble though it was, of her old peevish vehemence. "n.o.body's thought of but Ethel. If you had had your way," looking hard at Mr. G.o.dolphin, "she wouldn't have been allowed to come near me; no, not if I had died."

Her mood changed to tears. Lady Sarah whispered to him to leave the room: it would not do, this excitement. Thomas wondered why he had been brought to it. "I will come and see you again when you are better," he soothingly whispered.

"No you won't," sobbed Sarah Anne. "You are going to Scotland, and I shall be dead when you come back. I don't want to die. Why do they frighten me with their prayers? Good-bye, Thomas G.o.dolphin."

The last words were called after him; when he had taken his leave of her and was quitting the room. Lady Sarah attended him to the threshold: her eyes full, her hands lifted. "You may see that there's no hope of her!"

she wailed.

Thomas did not think there was the slightest hope. To his eye--though it was not so practised an eye in sickness as Mr. Snow's, or even as that of the Rector of All Souls'--it appeared that in a very few days, perhaps hours, hope for Sarah Anne Grame would be over for ever.

Ethel waited for him in the hall, and was leading the way back to the drawing-room; but he told her he could not stay longer, and opened the front door. She ran past him into the garden, putting her hand into his as he came out.

"I wish you were not going away," she sadly said, her spirits, that night very unequal, causing her to see things with a gloomy eye.

"I wish you were going with me!" replied Thomas G.o.dolphin. "Do not weep, Ethel. I shall soon be back again."