A True Friend Part 53

Janetta looked into his face, and saw that he more than suspected the truth.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The window curtains are burned, m'm, and the bed-curtains; also the bed clothes in different places, and one or two other light articles about the room. It is easy to see that it was not exactly an accident, m'm."

Then, seeing Janetta's color change, he added kindly, "But there's no call for you to feel afraid, m'm. We've all known as the poor lady's been going off her head for a good long time, and this is only perhaps what might have been expected, seeing what her feelings are. You leave it all to me, and just keep her quiet, m'm; I'll see to the room, and n.o.body else shall put their foot into it. The master will be home this morning, I hope and trust."

He hobbled away, and Janetta went back to Mrs. Brand. The reaction was setting in; her own hurts had not been attended to, and were beginning to give her a good deal of pain; and she was conscious of sickness and faintness as well as fatigue. A great dread of Mrs. Brand's next words and actions was also coming over her.

But for the present, at least, she need not have been afraid! Mrs. Brand was lying on the bed in a kind of stupor: her eyes were only half-open; her hands were very cold.

Janetta did her best to warm and comfort her physically; and then, finding that she seemed to sleep more naturally, she got her hands bound up and sat down to await the coming of the doctor.

But she was not destined to wait in idleness very long. She was summoned to Mrs. Wyvis Brand, who had awakened suddenly from her sleep and was coughing violently. Little Julian had to be hastily sent back to his own room, for his mother's cough was dangerous as well as distressing to her, and Janetta was anxious that he should not witness what might prove to be a painful sight.

And she was not far wrong. For the violent cough produced on this occasion one of its most serious results. The shock, the exposure, the exertion, had proved almost too much for Mrs. Wyvis Brand's strength.

She ruptured a blood-vessel just as the doctor entered the house; and all that he could do was to check the bleeding with ice, and enjoin perfect quiet and repose. And when he had seen her, he had to hear from Janetta the story of that terrible night. She felt that it was wise to trust Dr. Burroughs entirely, and she told him, in outline, the whole story of Mrs. Brand's depression of spirits, and of her evident half-mad notion that she might gain Wyvis' forgiveness for her past mistakes by some deed that would set him free from his unloved wife, and enable him to lead a happier life in the future.

The doctor shook his head when he saw his patient. "It is just as well for her, perhaps," he said afterwards, "but it is sad for her son and for those who love her--if any one does! She will probably not recover.

She is in a state of complete prostration; and she will most likely slip away in sleep."

"Oh, I am sorry," said Janetta, with tears in her eyes.

The doctor looked at her kindly. "You need not be sorry for her, my dear. She is best out of a world which she was not fitted to cope with.

You should not wish her to stay."

"It will be so sad for Wyvis, when he comes home to-day," murmured Janetta, her lip trembling.

"He is coming to-day, is he? Early this morning? I will stay with you, if you like."

Janetta was glad of the offer, although it gave her an uneasy feeling that the end was nearer than she thought.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE LAST SCENE.

"She does not know you," Dr. Burroughs said, when, a few hours later, Wyvis bent over his mother's pillow and looked into her quiet, care-lined face.

"Will she never know me?" asked the young man in a tone of deep distress. "My poor mother! I must tell her how sorry I am for the pain that I have often given her."

"She may be conscious for a few minutes by-and-bye," the doctor said.

"But consciousness will only show that the end is near."

There was a silence in the room. Mrs. Brand had now lain in a stupor for many hours. Wyvis had been greeted on his arrival with sad news indeed: his mother and wife were seriously ill, and the doctor acknowledged that he did not think Mrs. Brand likely to live for many hours.

Wyvis had not been allowed to enter his wife's room, Juliet had to be kept very quiet, lest the haemorrhage should return. He was almost glad of the respite; he dreaded the meeting, and he was anxious to bestow all his time upon his mother. Janetta had told him something about what had pa.s.sed; he had heard an outline, but only an outline, of the sad story, and it must be confessed that as yet he could not understand it. It was perhaps difficult for a man to fathom the depths of a woman's morbid misery, or of a doating mother's pa.s.sionate and unreasonable love. He grieved, however, over what was somewhat incomprehensible to him, and he thought once or twice with a sudden sense of comfort that Janetta would explain, Janetta would make him understand. He looked round for her when this idea occurred to him; but she was not in the room. She did not like to intrude upon what might be the last interview between mother and son, for she was firmly persuaded that Mrs. Brand would recover consciousness, and would tell Wyvis in her own way something of what she had thought and felt; but she was not far off, and when Wyvis sent her a peremptory message to the effect that she was wanted, she came at once and took up her position with him as watcher beside his mother's bed.

Janetta was right. Mrs. Brand's eyes opened at last, and rested on Wyvis' face with a look of recognition. She smiled a little, and seemed pleased that he was there. It was plain that for the moment she had quite forgotten the events of the last few hours, and the first words that she spoke proved that the immediate past had completely faded from her mind.

"Wyvis!" she faltered. "Are you back again, dear? And is--is your father with you?"

"I am here, mother," Wyvis answered. He could say nothing more.

"But your father----"

Then something--a gleam of reawakening memory--seemed to trouble her; she looked round the room, knitted her brows anxiously, and murmured a few words that Wyvis could not hear.

"I remember now," she said, in a stronger voice. "I wanted something--I thought it was your father, but it was something quite different--I wanted your forgiveness, Wyvis."

"Mother, mother, don't speak in that way," cried her son. "Have you not suffered enough to expiate _any_ mistake?"

"Any mistake, perhaps, not any sin," said his mother feebly. "Now that I am old and dying, I call things by their right names. I did you a wrong, and I did Cuthbert a wrong, and I am sorry now."

"It is all past," said Wyvis softly. "It does not matter now."

"You forgive me for my part in it? You do not hate me?"

"Mother! Have I been cold to you then? I have loved you all the time, and never blamed you in my heart."

"You said that I was to blame."

"But I did not mean it. I never thought that you would take an idle word of mine so seriously, mother. Forgive me, and believe me that I would not have given you pain for the world if I had thought, if I had only thought that it would hurt you so much!"

His mother smiled faintly, and closed her eyes for a moment, as if the exertion of speaking had been too much for her; but, after a short pause, she started suddenly, and opened her eyes with a look of extreme terror.

"What is it," she said. "What have I done? Where is she?"

"Who, mother?"

"Your wife, Juliet. What did I do? Is she dead? The fire--the fire----"

Wyvis looked helplessly round for Janetta. He could not answer: he did not know how to calm his mother's rapidly increasing excitement. Janetta came forward and bent over the pillow.

"No, Juliet is not dead. She is in her room; you must not trouble yourself about her," she said.

Mrs. Brand's eyes were fixed apprehensively on Janetta's face.

"Tell me what I did," she said in a loud whisper.

It was difficult to answer. Wyvis hid his face in a sort of desperation.

He wondered what Janetta was going to say, and listened in amazement to her first words.

"You were ill," said Janetta clearly. "You did not know what you were doing, and you set fire to the curtains in her room. n.o.body was hurt, and we all understand that you would have been very sorry to harm anybody. It is all right, dear grandmother, and you must remember that you were not responsible for what you were doing then."