The little Alice, Maria Hatherton's own child, had lingered and
struggled long, but all the care and kindness of the good Sisters at
St. Norbert's had been unavailing, she had sunk at last, and the mother
remained in a dull, silent, tearless misery, quietly doing all that was
required of her, but never speaking nor giving the ladies any opening to
try to make an impression upon her.
Rachel gleaned more intelligence than her mother meant her to obtain,
and brooded over it in her weakness and her silence.
Recovery is often more trying than illness, and Rachel suffered greatly.
Indeed, she was not sure that she ought to have recovered at all, and
perhaps the shock to her nerves and spirits was more serious than
the effect of the sharp passing disorder, which had, however, so much
weakened her that she succumbed entirely to the blow. "Accountable for
all," the words still rang in her ears, and the all for which she was
accountable continually magnified itself. She had tied a dreadful knot,
which Fanny, meek contemned Fanny had cut, but at the cost of grievous
suffering and danger to her boys, and too late to prevent that death
which continually haunted Rachel; those looks of convulsive agony came
before her in all her waking and sleeping intervals. Nothing put them
aside, occupation in her weakness only bewildered and distracted her,
and even though she was advancing daily towards convalescence, leaving
her room, and being again restored to her sister, she still continued
listless, dejected, cast down, and unable to turn her mind from this one
dreary contemplation. Of Fanny and her sons it was hardly possible
to think, and one of the strange perturbations of the mind in illness
caused her to dwell far less on them than on the minor misery of the
fate of the title-deeds of the Burnaby Bargain, which she had put into
Mauleverer's hand. She fancied their falling into the hands of some
speculator, who, if he did not break the mother's heart by putting up
a gasometer, would certainly wring it by building hideous cottages, or
desirable marine residences. The value would be enhanced so as to be
equal to more than half that of the Homestead, the poor would have been
cheated of it, and what compensation could be made? Give up all her own
share? Nay, she had nothing absolutely her own while her mother lived,
only £5,000 was settled on her if she married, and she tortured herself
with devising plans that she knew to be impracticable, of stripping
herself, and going forth to suffer the poverty she merited. Yes, but how
would she have lived? Not like the Williamses! She had tried teaching
like the one, and writing like the other, but had failed in both. The
Clever Woman had no marketable or available talent. She knew very well
that nothing would induce her mother and sister to let her despoil
herself, but to have injured them would be even more intolerable; and
more than all was the sickening uncertainty, whether any harm had been
done, or what would be its extent.