She was getting much excited. "I think I had better leave her now,"
said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
"Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards
night--in the morning she is calmer."
I rose. "Stop!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "there is another thing I
wished to say. He threatens me--he continually threatens me with
his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid
out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and
blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy
troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?"
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught:
she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more
composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with
her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor
forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I
got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very
cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing,
reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her
sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the
hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at
a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing
materials with me, and they served me for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to
take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in
sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened
momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of
imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon,
and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and
a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an
elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-
bloom One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was
to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it
a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a
broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage:
that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill
it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be
traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined
nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-
looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided
cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were
wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above
the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last,
because they required the most careful working. I drew them large;
I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the
irids lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I
thought, as I surveyed the effect: "they want more force and
spirit;" and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might
flash more brilliantly--a happy touch or two secured success.
There, I had a friend's face under my gaze; and what did it signify
that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I
smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.