By Berwen Banks Part 31

"No," he said, looking backwards, "not you, Miss Powell; let me manage him."

Valmai turned white to the lips, and, gently putting the old woman aside, took her place at the bedside, where a pitiful sight met her eyes. Her little one lay in the terrible throes of "convulsions," and again the doctor tried to banish Valmai from the scene.

"Let me be," she said, in a quiet voice, which astonished the young man. "Let me be; I am used to trouble." And pa.s.sing her arm under the little struggling frame, she supported it until the last gasp put an end to its sufferings.

Mr. Francis took the child into his own arms and laid it on the bed, turning his attention to Valmai, who had fallen fainting on the floor.

"Poor thing! poor thing!" said the tender-hearted young man. "It is a pity she cannot remain unconscious."

But he applied the usual restoratives, and she soon opened her eyes, while Nance straightened the folds of the little night-gown with loving fingers, tears coursing each other down her wrinkled face.

"Oh, dear heart! how will she bear it?"

Mr. Francis was silently bathing the girl's forehead.

"You are better now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said; "thank you. You have been very kind, but do not trouble to stay longer; I am quite well," and she slowly rose from the settle.

"I will go now," said the young man. "You would like to be alone, but I will call in the afternoon. You will want someone to--to--make arrangements for you."

"Arrangements? To have my little one buried? Yes, yes, of course. I shall be thankful, indeed."

"Here, or at Penderin?"

"Oh, here--in the 'rock' churchyard."

"I will go at once," and he went out, gently closing the door upon the two women in their sorrow.

In the afternoon he came again, and, being a man of very warm feelings, dreaded the scene of a woman's tears and sobs, though he longed to soothe and comfort the girl who so much interested him. But there were no tears or wailings awaiting him.

Valmai sat in the low rush chair in stony despair, her hands clasped on her lap, her face white as her dress, her blue eyes dry, and with a mute, inquiring gaze in them, as though she looked around for an explanation of this fresh misery.

He did not tell her more than was necessary of his interview with the Vicar. The child was supposed to be illegitimate as well as unbaptised, and could not, therefore, be allowed to sleep his last sleep in the company of the baptised saints.

Old Shon, the s.e.xton, was already digging the little grave in a corner of the churchyard relegated to such unconsidered and unwelcomed beings as this. However, it was a sunny corner, sheltered from the sea-wind, and the docks and nettles grew luxuriantly there.

Such dry-eyed, quiet grief amongst the emotional Welsh was new to the doctor, and he knew that if tears did not come to her relief her health would suffer, so he gently tried to make her talk of her little one.

"I saw you had tried a hot bath, or I would have recommended it," he said.

"Yes, Nance had."

"I truly sympathise with you; he was a fine child."

"Yes, he is a beautiful child," said Valmai.

"I am sorry to wound your feelings, but what day would you wish him to be buried?"

"Oh, any day; it makes no difference now."

"To-day is Friday. Shall we say Monday, then?"

"Yes, Monday will do. At what time?" said Valmai.

"At four o'clock."

Nance was crying silently.

"Mrs. Hughes wants to know if you will come and stay with her till after Monday. I have my gig at Abersethin, and can row you over now."

Valmai smiled, and the sadness of that smile remained in Mr. Francis'

memory.

"No," she said, shaking her head slowly, "I will not leave my baby until he is buried, but thank her for me, and thank you, oh, so much.

I did not know there was so much kindness left in the world."

As she spoke the tears gathered in her eyes, and, throwing her arms over the feet of the little dead child, she rested her head upon them, and broke into long, deep sobs.

Mr. Francis, more content, went quietly out of the house, and did not see Valmai again until on Monday he met the funeral in the churchyard.

Valmai, to the horror of Nance and her friends, wore her usual white dress. She had a bunch of white jessamine in her hand, and, as the little coffin disappeared from sight, she showered the flowers upon it.

Nance was too infirm to accompany her, so that she stood alone beside the grave, although surrounded by the fisher folk of the island. She sobbed bitterly as she heard the heavy clods fall on the coffin, and when at last everything was over, and it was time to move away, she looked round as if for a friend; and Mr. Francis, unable to resist the pleading look, pushed his way towards her, and, quietly drawing her arm within his own, led her homewards down the gra.s.sy slope to the sh.o.r.e, over the rough, uneven sand, and in at the humble cottage door. Nance received her with open arms, into which Valmai sank with a pa.s.sionate burst of tears, during which Mr. Francis went out unnoticed.

[1] Poor little fellow.

CHAPTER XIV.

UNREST.

The summer months had pa.s.sed away, and September had come and gone, and yet Cardo had not arrived. Valmai had trusted with such unswerving faith that in September all her troubles would be over--that Cardo would come to clear her name, and to reinstate her in the good opinion of all her acquaintances; but as the month drew to its close, and October's mellow tints began to fall on all the country-side, her heart sank within her, and she realised that she was alone in the world, with no friend but Nance to whom to turn for advice or sympathy.

A restless feeling awoke in her heart--a longing to be away from the place where every scene reminded her of her past happiness and her present sorrow. Every day she visited the little grave in the churchyard, and soon that corner of the burying-ground, which had once been the most neglected, became the neatest and most carefully tended.

For her own child's sake, all the other nameless graves had become sacred to Valmai; she weeded and trimmed them until the old s.e.xton was proud of what he called the "babies' corner." A little white cross stood at the head of the tiny grave in which her child lay, with the words engraved upon it, "In memory of Robert Powell ----." A s.p.a.ce was left at the end of the line for another name to be added when Cardo came home, and the words, "Born June the 30th; died August the 30th,"

finished the sad and simple story. Nance, too, who seemed to have revived a good deal latterly, often brought her knitting to the sunny corner, and Valmai felt she could safely leave her gra.s.sy garden to the care of her old friend.

"You are better, Nance," she said one day, when she had been sitting long on the rocks gazing out to sea, in one of those deep reveries so frequent with her now, "and if I paid Peggi 'Bullet' for living with you and attending to you, would you mind my going away? I feel I cannot rest any longer here; I must get something to do--something to fill my empty hands and my empty heart."

"No, calon fach," said Nance the unselfish, "I will not mind at all, I am thinking myself that it is not good for you to stay here brooding over your sorrow. Peggi 'Bullet' and I have been like sisters since the time when we were girls, and harvested together, and went together to gather wool on the sheep mountains. You have made me so rich, too, my dear, that I shall be quite comfortable; but you will come and see me again before very long, if I live?"

"Oh, yes, Nance. People who have asthma often live to be very old.

You know that, wherever I am, I will be continually thinking of you, and of the little green corner up there in the rock churchyard; and I will come back sometimes to see you."

"But where will you go, my dear?"