Chapter 43
"Pray listen to me, miss. Master does not like me, for I make him think of poor Woodham; and I'm a bad nurse, and I feel sometimes as if I couldn't bear it."
"You are not a bad nurse," said Claude, taking the woman's hand; "but you feel it hard work to settle down again--that is all."
"No, no, miss, it isn't only that," said the woman wildly. "But let me speak to you again, my dear; he wants you now."
Claude nodded to her smilingly, and hurried into her father's room, leaving the woman standing with knitted brow, and hands clasped.
She looked fixedly at the door, uttered a sigh, and went to her room, to sit thinking deeply of the duty she was called upon to perform, just as her love for Claude was fast growing.
Volume Two, Chapter IV.
IN THE SHADOW.
"Don't you think papa seems much better, Sarah?" said Claude one day.
She was busy in the store-room, playing the part of mistress at the Fort, and giving out sundry and domestic necessaries to the old servant, who was watching her intently, and leaning over her with a singularly intent look in her eyes which seemed to soften her hard countenance.
"Yes, my dear; it is some time since he has had a fit."
"Let me see; you will want rice and more coffee."
"And maccaroni," said Sarah quietly.
"No; don't have rice and maccaroni. Tell cook not to send up two farinaceous puddings the same day. It annoys papa."
"Because they are good for him," said Sarah drily.
"Ah!" said Claude, turning upon her sharply, but with a playful manner; "you must not censure sick people. Why, Sarah, what makes you watch me so intently?"
There were tears in the woman's eyes, as, with a hysterical catching of the breath, she took hold of the hand which was pa.s.sing her a package, and pressed it pa.s.sionately to her lips, kissing it again and again.
"Sarah!"
"Don't be angry with me, my dear. I'm not the same as I used to be.
Trouble has changed me; I couldn't help it. When I see you grown up into such a beautiful woman, so calm and quiet and ladylike, quite the mistress of the house, and talking as you do, it gives me a catching in the throat."
"You are not well."
"Yes, my dear, quite well; but it makes me think of the tiny girl who used to love me so, and whose pretty little arms were thrown about my neck, and who kissed me every night when she went to bed."
"Yes; but I was a little girl then."
"You were, my dear; and don't you remember, when I heard you say your prayers, it was always, 'Pray G.o.d, bless Sarah,' as well as those whom it was your duty to pray for. Ah, Miss Claude, you used to love me then."
"And how do you know that I do not love you now?"
"Ah, that's all changed, my dear. You are no longer a little girl."
"But I do love you now."
"No, no, my dear; not as you used to."
"And keep still to the simple old form of prayer I was taught as a child, with a word for the poor, stricken old friend who was always
"No," said the woman sadly.
"Sarah!"
"Yes, yes, yes; you do, my own darling," she cried, as she sank upon her knees and pressed Claude's hand to her cheek. "You do, you must, and you have shown it to me by what you have done. I'm a wicked, ungrateful wretch."
"No, no, no; be calm, be calm," whispered Claude soothingly.
"No, my dear, there is no more happiness and rest for me. You do not know--you do not know."
"I know my poor old nurse is in sad trouble, and that there must be times when she feels all the past cruelly. But do you forget what we are taught about patience under affliction? Do you ever pray for help to bear all this as you should?"
"No, no," cried the woman fiercely; "I feel sometimes as if I dare not pray."
"There, there," said Claude, laying her hand tenderly upon the woman's arm, "you must not talk like that. You are ill and upset to-day. Try and be patient. Come, you are not quite alone in the world, Sarah. I am your friend."
The woman kissed her hand again pa.s.sionately, as she moaned to herself in the agony of her spirit, for there before her she seemed to see her husband's reproachful eyes, and to hear his voice as he bade her be strong, and keep down all weak feelings of love for others till she had accomplished the terrible revenge.
"Come, come, come," said Claude gently. "I was in hopes that you were growing happier and more contented. Try to be. Time will soften all this pain. I know how terribly you have suffered, and that my words must sound very weak and commonplace to you; but you will be more patient, and bear all this."
The agonising emotion seemed to choke all utterance, for a fierce battle was going on within the woman's breast. Love for her young mistress strove with the feeling of duty to the dead, and the superst.i.tious horror of breaking that vow voluntarily; and at last, excusing herself, she hurried away to her room to lock herself in, and throw herself upon her knees to pray for help--to pray that she might be forgiven, and spared from the terrible task placed upon her as a duty to fulfil.
But no comfort came, only a hard sensation of fate drawing her on till she grew feverish and restless. Red spots burned in her sallow cheeks, and she rose from her knees at last with a heavy, lowering look in her eyes, as she muttered to herself--
"Yes, it must be done. It is fate. He knew better than I, and saw with dying eyes what was right. Yes, I cannot go back now."
That night Sarah Woodham lay long awake, suffering a mental agony such as comes to the lot of few. Her woman's nature rebelled against her fate, for beneath the hard, morose sh.e.l.l there was an abundance of the gentle milk of human kindness; but her long married training in the hard letter of the sect to which her husband belonged had placed her self-styled duty so to the front that it had become an idol--a stern, tyrannical idol, who must at all costs be obeyed, and she shrank with horror, as at a sin of the most terrible nature, from daring to disobey the injunction laid upon her by the dead.
Religion belief and superst.i.tious dread joined hand in hand to force her onward, and she lay s.h.i.+vering in her bed, reproaching herself for striving to escape from the fulfilment of her husband's last command.
Night after night she suffered a martyrdom; but upon this particular occasion it seemed to her that she was in close communication with the unseen, and, with eyes wild and strained, she kept trying to pierce the darkness, lying in antic.i.p.ation of some severe reproof for tarrying so long.
Hours had pa.s.sed, but sleep would not come; and at last, in a desponding voice, she moaned--
"It is too much. I am only a poor weak woman. Isaac, Isaac, husband, my burden is greater than I can bear."
The words she had uttered aloud startled her, and she lay trembling, but they seemed to have relieved her over-burdened heart, and a feeling of calm restfulness gradually stole over her, and she slept, with the tears slowly stealing from beneath her closed lids.
"Isaac, husband, for her sake don't ask me to do this thing."
The words came in a hurried whisper, telling too plainly that, even in sleep, the rest had not quite calmed her tortured brain, for the task was there, and she moaned again and again piteously, as if continuing her appeal for mercy.
But in her imagination there was none. Her eyes had hardly closed before she seemed to be back in the cottage listening to the dying man's utterances, full of bigoted intolerance and hate, bidding her avenge him; and at last she started up in bed with a cry of horror, to sit there pressing her wet dark hair back from her brow, and staring wildly into the darkest corner of the room.
"Yes, I hear," she said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I have tried indeed; but you don't know. I am only a poor, weak creature, and it is so hard--so hard, but I will--I will."