Quarantine weighed, however, most heavily upon poor Grace Curtis. Rachel

had from the first insisted that she should be kept out of her room; and

the mother's piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, "Why

should I be deprived of you both in one day?" So Grace found herself

condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine's. She could only

answer notes, respond to inquiries, without even venturing far enough

from the house to see Ermine, or take out the Temple children for a

walk. For indeed, Rachel's state was extremely critical.

The feverish misery that succeeded Lovedy's death had been utterly

crushing, the one load of self-accusation had prostrated her, but with

a restlessness of agony, that kept her writhing as it were in her

wretchedness; and then came the gradual increase of physical suffering,

bearing in upon her that she had caught the fatal disorder. To her sense

of justice, and her desire to wreak vengeance on herself, the notion

might be grateful; but the instinct of self-preservation was far

stronger. She could not die. The world here, the world to come, were all

too dark, too confused, to enable her to bear such a doom. She saw her

peril in her mother's face; in the reiterated visits of the medical

man, whom she no longer spurned; in the calling in of the Avoncester

physician; in the introduction of a professional nurse, and the strong

and agonizing measures to which she had to submit, every time with

the sensation that the suffering could not possibly be greater without

exceeding the powers of endurance.

Then arose the thought that with weakness she should lose all chance of

expressing a wish, and, obtaining pencil and paper, she began to write

a charge to her mother and sister to provide for Mary Morris; but in

the midst there came over her the remembrance of the papers that she had

placed in Mauleverer's hands--the title-deeds of the Burnaby Bargain; an

estate that perhaps ought to be bringing in as much as half the rental

of the property. It must be made good to the poor. If the title-deeds

had been sold to any one who could claim the property, what would be

the consequence? She felt herself in a mist of ignorance and perplexity;

dreading the consequences, yet feeling as if her own removal might

leave her fortune free to make up for them. She tried to scrawl an

explanation; but mind and fingers were alike unequal to the task, and

she desisted just as fresh torture began at the doctor's hands--torture

from which they sent her mother away, and that left her exhausted, and

despairing of holding out through a repetition.

And then--and then! "Tell me of my Saviour," the dying child had said;

and the drawn face had lightened at the words to which Rachel's oracles

declared that people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she

hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far

away, for the reality of those simple teachings--once realities, now

all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a

last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong

blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was

this ground of hope? She tried to think of progress and purification

beyond the grave; but this was the most speculative, insecure fabric of

all. There was no habit of trust to it--no inward conviction, no outward

testimony. And even when the extreme danger subsided, and Francis Temple

was known to be better, Rachel found that her sorrow was not yet

ended: for Conrade had been brought home with the symptoms of the

complaint--Conrade, the most beloved and loving of Fanny's little ones,

the only one who really remembered his father, was in exceeding, almost

hopeless peril, watched day and night by his mother and Miss Williams.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024