CHAPTER XLI.

JOSEY WEST DECLARES THAT SHE HAS GOT INTO HER PROPER GROOVE.

A week had passed, and there was still no change in my mother's condition. Every time the doctor visited her, his manner became more serious. The shadow of death seemed to hang already over the house.

'Her strength will not hold out for another week, I am afraid.' He spoke these words to Josey West, out of my hearing as he thought.

I followed him from the house.

'I heard what you said to Miss West,' I said to him. 'Is all hope really gone? Can nothing be done?'

He did not reply immediately, and before he spoke he took my arm kindly.

'This is one of the cases outside my experience. Your mother has nothing that a physician can grapple with. She has no organic disease that I can discover, and although physically she is fearfully weak, it is mental suffering that is killing her. It is not usual for a doctor to speak as plainly as I am speaking to you, but it is best to do so. I have heard so much that is good and noble in your mother's life, that it would rejoice me exceedingly to see her rise from her bed in health.'

'No one but I can know how tender and beautiful her life has been,' I said, with sobs. 'If I could give my life for hers, I would resign it with cheerfulness.'

'But I suspect,' said the doctor, with a curiously-observant air upon him, 'that that is just the thing that would be most effectual in killing her. Come, now, recover yourself: I have something to say to you. I shall count a hundred, and then I shall go on. . . . When you first consulted me, and I asked you what your mother was suffering from, I seriously meant it. I want to cure your mother, or at all events to show you the way to do it, for I have an idea that you, not I, must be the doctor. I will make you a present of all my little fees in this case if I am successful. That ought to assure you of my earnestness.' He smiled gently as he said this. 'Knowing full well, as you say, that you would treble them if we happily succeed. I will give you another proof of my earnestness. I loved my mother. Have I won your confidence? Well then, I can grapple with physical disease with fair success; give me the opportunity of grappling with the mental disease which is killing your mother. I have an hour, perhaps two, to spare. Tell me, unreservedly, the story of your mother's life, in which of course yours will be included. Conceal nothing, and be especially explicit in every incident where the feelings are brought into play. If you understand me, and are willing to trust me, commence at once.'

I told him all, freely and without reservation, from my first remembrance in connection with my mother, to the time--but a few days past--when I heard her in her delirium speaking to my father about me and my future. Many times during the recital I was compelled to pause from emotion, and when I finished his eyes also were suffused with tears.

'I know now,' he said softly, what will kill your mother if she dies. It will shock you to hear it, and you must not think me cruel for telling you. When your mother, in the night she was taken ill, cried to you that her heart was almost broken, it was no mere phrase that she uttered--it was a cry from her soul, and the words exactly represented her condition. If she dies, it will be because her heart _is_ broken. And you will have broken it. Ay,' he continued gently, as I started in horror from him, 'and so would your mother start from me if she had strength and sense to hear and understand. She would think me the cruelest monster. But what I have said is true nevertheless. Your mother's life has been bound up in yours. No woman, unsustained by most perfect and most unselfish love, could have held up against such trials as hers; where she has had doubts she has thrust them from her, and her deep affection has given her strength to bear her sufferings. For a long time there has been raging within her a mental conflict, the torture of which only those can understand who love as she loves, and only those can feel whose natures are as delicately sensitive as hers. Even I, until now a stranger to her and to you, can see the fire which has been consuming her gentle spirit. And when the final blow came, and she was made to feel by your words that she had wrecked your happiness and had lost your love (for she _must_ have felt then what she had long feared), she sank beneath it. I have, thank God, through all my life reverenced woman's character, but I never reverenced it so thoroughly as I do now, after hearing your story. You ask me if all hope is really gone, and if nothing can be done? Well, I see a way. What can kill can cure. I warn you that the chance is a slight one, but it must be tried. Can you afford to go away from London for a time?'

'Yes, I have money saved; and I think I could arrange to take work with me, and do it in the country.'

'That is well. If you will take your mother away from London, say to the scenes with which you were familiar when you were a child, and attend to her yourself, and make her feel and understand that you love her as she deserves and yearns to be loved, she may recover. That is the only chance. She is almost certain to have conscious intervals. If you have tact enough to be alone with her, as you were in the old days, when her consciousness first returns, it may prove the turning-point towards convalescence. I cannot explain myself more fully; I will give you a simple strengthening medicine with you, and all necessary directions as to diet. When will you go?'

I arranged to go on the following day, and Josey West said that, notwithstanding what the doctor had said, it was impossible that I should go alone. Her sister Florry, who was nearly sixteen years of age, should accompany us.

'If your mother asks who she is,' said Josey, 'you can say she is the maid.'

So it was settled, and Florry, a pretty good girl, who was wild with delight at the idea of going into the country, promised to do her best.

No news had been heard of uncle Bryan. I cannot say that, after my anger had cooled, I was not anxious about him. It was impossible for me to be indifferent as to his fate, and I made inquiries quietly, but without result. He had disappeared most effectually, and had left no trace behind. My principal reason for wishing to find him was to let him know that we were leaving his house, and that we should not return; I had made up my mind on this point. Josey West and I had a long conversation about him.

I believe he will never come back, my dear,' said Josey, 'never, under any circumstances. Of course you have heard what some of the neighbours say--that he has made away with himself; but that's all nonsense. He's not a man of that sort. He'll rub on grimly and grumly to the end. Why, my dear, if it was to happen that he was to starve to death--which he wouldn't do willingly, and without trying to get bread--he'd starve quietly and without a murmur. Ah, he's a wicked old man, I daresay, and I know that you have cause to hate him, but I can't help liking him a bit for all that. What I shall do about the shop is this, unless you object. I shall shut up our house--there's no business doing, my dear; I don't lend out a wardrobe a month--and all the children shall come round here to live. It will be good fun for them. I shall keep the accounts as square as I can, although the figures are getting into a mess already, and I'm beginning to be bothered with them--but never mind, there's the money, so much paid out, so much coming in; it'll be simple enough to reckon what's left. And if I _do_ hear anything of your uncle, I'll be off to him at once, and bring him back, tied up, if he won't come any other way.'

I could see no better plan than this, and I thanked Josey cordially.

'Where are you going to first?' she asked, interrupting me abruptly.

'To Hertford, where I was born,' I replied.

She nodded, and said she thought it was the best place, and that I must be sure and keep her informed of my whereabouts, as she would want to write to me regularly. The next morning we were off.

We reached Hertford by easy stages. Josey was quite right in insisting that I should take Florry with me. I soon learnt that I could not have done without some one, and I found Florry to be so quietly and unobtrusively useful that I grew very fond of the little maid. I took lodgings in a pleasant suburb, from the windows of which we could see the river Lea, and the barges gliding indolently along. Florry said it was heavenly. My mother bore the journey well, and was no worse at the end than when we started. I was very thankful for that, for I feared she might not be strong enough to bear it; but we were very careful of her, and if she had been my sister Florry could not have been more attentive and affectionate. But my mother knew no one, and saw only the pictures and figures which her fevered imagination conjured up. I selected for her bedroom a large room on the first floor, and placed her bed so that she could see the river from it. I fixed my table for work so that when she opened her eyes, and looked towards the river, she could see me also. I had been fortunate enough to obtain sufficient work to last me for three or four weeks, and I was sure of more to follow.

On the very first day I observed what I thought was a favourable change in my mother. Awaking from a restless sleep she opened her eyes, and saw a white sail passing along the river; she watched it quietly until it was out of sight, and then closed her eyes and slept again, but more peacefully than before. She did not seem to see me, although I turned my face to her and smiled. It was soon evident that she took pleasure in the prospect of the river, for before two days had passed I observed her lie and watch it restfully. It appeared to act like a charm upon her, bringing peace to her troubled heart in some strange way. In London, during her illness, scarcely an hour had passed, day and night, without her rest being broken by sobs; but here in Hertford, after she grew accustomed to the sight of the river, her days were quiet and peaceful, and it was only in the night that she was disturbed. During the first week I left her but twice; once to go to the house in which I was born, and once to visit the old churchyard in which my father was buried. The house was the same as I remembered it, and the churchyard had a few new gravestones in it; there was no other change. All my childish experiences came vividly to my mind, and I should scarcely have been surprised, as I peeped through the parlour-window, where I used to sit in my low armchair with my grandmother, listening to her monotonous heavy breathing, to see her sitting in state, in her silk dress, with her large fat hands folded in her lap! I _did_ see a woman who reminded me of Jane Painter, our servant, and I crossed the road quickly and walked away from her. In the churchyard, I went to my father's grave, and then to the grave of Snaggletooth's little daughter. I found it quite easily, but the inscription upon it was no longer discernible. I remembered so well every incident of that day that I could see myself carried out of the churchyard in Snaggletooth's arms, and I closed my eyes as I thought how I fell asleep there.

These scenes and remembrances soothed and consoled me; I seemed to be lifted out of a fever of unrest.

Gradually my mother's eyes grew accustomed to see me working always at my table, and they began to dwell on me, at first unconcernedly, but presently with a kind of struggling observance in them. I hailed this change with gladness, and waited and hoped, and prayed humbly night and morning. Josey West wrote to me regularly, and one day this letter came:

'My dear Chris,--Don't open the packet enclosed in this until you read my letter. If you do, I'll haunt you, and you shall never have a minute's rest again. You told me once that every person in life has a proper groove. I think it very hard that I should have lived all these years without, until now, falling into _my_ proper groove; I am in it at last, but I am ready to slap all the children's faces to think that so many years have been wasted. I was born to be a grocer, and at last a grocer I am. If you can find me a better one than I am, show him to me, and I'll resign. I've been looking over your uncle's books, and, as true as I'm a living woman, I'm taking more money than ever he took, if his figures are right. Every day I make a new customer. There's Mrs. Simpson, the bricklayer's wife, at No. 9. If she's been in the shop once, she's been in it a dozen times to-day and yesterday: all the years the old gentleman kept the shop she didn't spend two-and-twopence in it--that's the sum she mentioned, and as I'm a woman of figures now, I must be precise. She does so like a gossip, she says, and she don't mind getting short weight, she says, so long as she can have a friendly word with her quarter of a pound of moist, and her two ounces of the best mixture. She tried all she knew to get the old gentleman to gossip with her, and as he wouldn't, she wouldn't deal with him. Mrs. Simpson is not the only one. There's Mrs. Primmins, and Mrs. Sillitoe, the butcher's wife, and Mrs. Macnamara, who takes snuff. They all like a gossip, and they all come to have it, and so long as they buy their groceries of me, I shall encourage them. Why, you'd be surprised to see the old shop sometimes! It's quite an Institution.

'Well, I've got along very well with everything, from the figs to the brickdust; but one thing puzzled me. If you have any love for me, my sweet child, don't betray me, for I'm not at all sure they couldn't hang me for it; but it pays, my sweet child, and it doesn't do any one any harm, and I shall go on doing it, and risk the consequences. Well, it's this. On the first Saturday I was here, the people came in for uncle Bryan's pills and uncle Bryan's mixture. Well, there was a supply in the drawers, and I served the customers. If there was one of them, my dear, there was fifty, and every one spent his penny or twopence, and a few threepence. Well, during the early part of the week I ran short of the pills and the mixture, and I was puzzled about another supply. I knew that the old gentleman made his own medicine, and I looked about for the prescription, but couldn't find it. Now, for all I knew, the success of the business might depend upon these pills and mixtures, which some of the neighbours are ready to swear by as being able to cure asthma, and consumption, and indigestion, and bronchitis, and dysentery, and flushings, and palpitation, and wooden legs, and sprains, and bruises, and pains in the bowels, and headache, and too much brandy, and low fever, and high fever, and jaundice, and warts, and scrofula, and coughs, and colds, and the chills, and I don't know what all besides. And if you knew the trouble I've taken to put all these things together, you'd cry out, "Bless the little woman! What a painstaking creature she is!" But to come back. Well, for all I knew, if the customers couldn't get these wonderful pills at our shop, they might go elsewhere to buy their tea and sugar, and that would never do. I was in a pucker, and Turk came in last Tuesday night, and I told him my trouble. Says Turk, "How many pills and how many bottles of mixture have you got left?" I counted them. Fourteen bottles of mixture, and eleven boxes of pills, large and small. "And what do they cure?" says Turk. I went over all those things that I've written at the top of this sheet. "I don't feel as if anything particular is the matter with me," says Turk; "how do you feel, Josey?" I told him that I felt the same. "Then," says Turk, "it's quite necessary that you and I should take a bottle of that mixture, and six pills, without one moment's delay. Else it might prove fatal." And would you believe it, my dear? Before I knew where I was, Turk had poured one of the bottles of the mixture down my throat, and another down his own, and made me, willy nilly, swallow pill for pill with him until we had each swallowed half a dozen. "And now," said Turk, "if we die, we'll perish in one another's arms; and I'll come to-morrow night and write our epitaphs. We'll be buried in one grave, and all the neighbours will come to the funeral." I didn't like it, I tell you, and I kept awake all night, fancying I had pains; but I ate a very good breakfast the next morning, and everything inside of me went on as usual. Turk came in the evening, and we compared notes, as he said. He said then that it was a very bad case indeed, and we must take another bottle of mixture and six more pills each of us. I said I wouldn't; he said I should, and that he wouldn't die without me; and as I'm a living woman, he held my head and poured the mixture down my throat. After that, I thought I might as well take the pills, especially as Turk said I'd have to. One may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, you know. They didn't have the slightest effect upon us for better or worse (and the sooner that day comes for me, and the man with the ring, the better I shall like it, my sweet child, and that's plain speaking), and Turk said it was the most wonderful cure that ever was known of the most wonderful complication of diseases that ever was heard of. Now if you can guess what Turk did next, you're a clever boy; but as you never _would_ guess, I'll tell you. He set to work making bread pills by the thousand (we found the board your uncle used to make them with), and he made a great basin of mixture, that tasted for all the world like the mixture in your uncle's bottles. You know, there scarcely _is_ any taste at all in it. He coloured the water, and then we filled all the empty bottles and pill-boxes, and had stock enough to last a month. You would have laughed if you had seen us making the medicine. It was done after the shop was shut and all the children were in bed. We locked the doors, and put something over all the windows and keyholes, and every minute or two Turk wriggled to the door, to slow music, to listen if anybody was outside. We were like conspirators. We had a great run on the pills and mixture on Saturday night, and my heart felt as if it was sinking into my shoes every time I served a box or a bottle; but I was obliged to put a brave face on it, and I served them over the counter as if they were the "real grit," as the Yankees say. When I went to bed, I wondered how many murders I had committed, and how many times I could be hanged. I felt worse on Monday morning when I stood behind the counter; but as the day went on, and I didn't hear of any persons in the neighbourhood dying in convulsions, and as I didn't see any undertaker's men about, I began to get a bit relieved in my mind. And when Mrs. Huxley came in--Mr. Huxley is besieged by a regular army of diseases, asthma, and rackets, and "ketches in the side," as his wife calls them--well, when she came in, and told me how ill her poor dear man was on Saturday night before taking the pills and mixture, and how well he was on Sunday after he'd swallowed two big doses, I began to think better of them. I plucked up courage to ask one and another how everybody was who had taken the physic, and would you believe it, my sweet child, none of them were ever better in their lives. And a story has got about that your uncle Bryan has gone to some place to make the pills and mixture in secret, so that no one shall find out what is in them. _I_ say nothing, except "Oh," and "Ah," and "Indeed," very mysteriously, and as if I didn't know anything about it (as how should I?), and the effect of these "Ohs" and "Ahs" and "Indeeds" is so extraordinary, that if I stood in a wagon, and talked by the hour together, with music playing all about me, and all the young ones dancing and posing, the thing couldn't work better. People are beginning to do what they never did before--they are buying the medicine in the middle of the week; and two strangers have already come in from a long distance for two boxes of the wonderful pills, one to cure palpitation and the other for the jaundice.

'Turk is getting along famously. He is a real good fellow, and everybody likes him. He is making heaps of new friends, and is doing a fine business. He sends his love to you, and says he will have plenty to tell you when you come home.

'Gus is going to India and Australia with a company; he plays leading business, and has a three years' engagement at twelve pounds a week, and all his travelling expenses paid. Not so bad for Gus; but then he's a genius, my dear.

'I hope Florry is behaving herself; but I am only joking when I say that. Don't you let her fall in love with you, and then break her heart; I'm joking again. When you come to think or us altogether, master Christopher, don't you think we're a _re-_markable family? If you don't, I do. You'd find it hard to beat us. You should read the letters Florry writes to us; they are perfect gems. Where we all got our cleverness from is a perfect puzzle; but it runs in some families. I'm glad Florry is with your mother; it will do her good. Ah, my dear, do you know I pray every night that you may bring your dear good mother home to us strong and well? I do, my dear, and it does me good.

'The letters that are in the enclosed packet came to the shop this morning. One of them is very heavy. I know your uncle's writing from the account-books he left behind him, and I see that it is his writing on the envelope. If there's any address inside, let me know, and I'll go and drag him home, although it will be the ruin of a fine business I see looming in the future in bread pills and the famous mixture made of coloured water.

'And now, my dear, I must leave off. This is the longest letter I ever wrote in my life, and if anybody had told me that I could have written it, I shouldn't have believed him. All the children send their love and kisses, and I send mine, and six kisses for your mother. When you give them to her, whisper that they're from a queer little woman in Paradise-row who loves both of you very much. Now don't you run away with the idea that _I'm_ going to break my heart over you.

'Oh, I almost forgot to say that the doctor was here to-day. He hasn't time to write, but he says he has read your letter carefully, and he thinks that your mother is going along well. He expects a change very soon for the better. He gave me another prescription for you, which I send in this.

'I never thought much of it till lately, my dear, but really there are a great many good people in the world--But there! if I don't stop at once, I shall go rambling on all night, and there's some one tapping at the door. Come in! Only think, I've written it instead of saying it--Your affectionate friend,

'Josey.'

I untied the packet which Josey had enclosed, and found two letters in it--one, very bulky, in uncle Bryan's handwriting, the other written by Jessie. How my heart beat as I gazed at the latter! Both were addressed to my mother.

It was a fine clear night, and a sweet soft air was stirring--so sweet and soft that I was sitting at my work-table with the window open. Florry had gone to bed; my mother was asleep. I had always opened my mother's letters, and I reflected whether I was justified in opening these. After a little while I decided to read uncle Bryan's letter, for the reason that it would probably inform me where he was staying; in which case I should be able to rid myself of the responsibility of his business. Jessie's letter I would not read--at least for the present; she may have written in it what she might not wish me to see. I laid it aside, and unfastened the envelope of uncle Bryan's letter. It contained many sheets of manuscript, methodically arranged, some in uncle Bryan's handwriting, some in a writing which was strange to me. I give them in their order. The first was from uncle Bryan to my mother:

'Dear Emma,--I will not speak of my reasons for leaving you. Perhaps you may be able to guess them. I did it for the best. My absence may bring peace and happiness into your home, for it is yours. I relinquish all claim to it. When I tell you that I shall never return, you will know that I shall not set foot inside the shop again. I cannot have many years longer to live, and I shall do well enough, so do not give yourself any anxiety about me. I shall always be able to get my bread, and I shall wait patiently for death, and shall be grateful when it comes, but I shall do nothing to hasten it. Life has been a weary load to me, and I shall be glad to shake it off. This impatience would change to resignation and to gratitude, not for death, but for life, if it were possible for one thing to happen; but it is utterly, utterly impossible, and it is just and right that it should be out of my reach.

'I have a distinct purpose in writing to you, apart from any selfish words which fall from my pen. It is this: In telling you and my nephew the story of my life I threw blame upon my dead wife. I did worse than this--I slandered her memory. That I spoke what I believed is no excuse for me. I created for myself, out of my blindness and fatal imperiousness of self, a delusion and a lie which have embittered my life. I could bear this with calmness if the consequences had fallen only on myself; but I see now, when it is too late, how I have made others suffer. The bitterest punishment that could fall upon me would not serve to expiate my deadly sin. I do suffer bitterly, keenly, and my soul writhes from pain and shame.

'Can I speak more strongly? And yet these words are weak. Too late I see my folly and my crime. Many things that Christopher said to me were true. I humbly ask his forgiveness, and I humbly pray that the happiness he said I did my best to destroy may yet fall to his lot. If he will picture me an old man with a bleeding heart into whose life few rays of sunshine have passed, pleading to him, he may soften towards me. Perhaps he may believe that I loved him; if he does believe it, he will believe the truth.

'The letter I send with this is from my dead wife; it will explain itself. I received it at the same time the letter came to you from Jessie. Merely looking at her name upon paper, now that I have written it, deepens my anguish, my shame, and my remorse. It will never fall to my lot to ask her forgiveness, as I ask yours and your son's. I put myself in her place, and I know what her feelings are.

'Let Christopher read this and my wife's letter.

'Good-bye, Emma. For your unwavering kindness and gentleness to me, who have repaid you so badly, receive the humble heartfelt thanks of Bryan Carey.'

Then followed the letter from his wife.