'Wilmet, do you think we shall go to the party at Centry Park?' reiterated Fulbert.
'Do hold your tongue about that. I don't believe there's the least chance,' said Alda fretfully.
'And I don't know how you can think of such a thing,' added Cherry.
'I want to see Cousin Marilda's Christmas tree,' whined Robina.
'Do ask Mamma again,' entreated another voice.
'I shall do no such thing,' said Wilmet, with absolute crossness in her tone.
Robina began to cry.
'Come here, Bobbie,' said Cherry's voice in the dark end of the room; 'I'll tell you a story.'
'I know all Cherry's stories, and they're rubbish,' said Fulbert.
'This is quite a new one. There was once a little match-girl'
'Bosh! I know that little brute, and I hate her,' broke in Fulbert.
'Hold your tongue,' said Clement; 'but'
'Oh no, don't let us have the match-girl,' cried several voices.
'Why can't you be good? There was once an old giant that lived in a cave'
'I hate old giants,' said Cherry's critical public; and her voice grew melancholy.
'But this one had but one eye. Come, do listen; papa told me. He was in an island' but the voice grew mournful, and was broken by a cry.
'Oh! Fulbert hurt me!'
'Fulbert, for shame! What is it, Angel dear?'
'I only laid hold of her pudding arm,' growled Fulbert. 'Oh! I say, Felix, that's too bad!'
'Hold your row, I say,' said Felix, after his application of fist law. 'Hollo! what's that?' and he sprang to his feet with Angela in his arms, as the door was opened by a hand groping, and Mr. Audley's voice said, 'Darkness visible.'
There was a general scrambling up all over the floor, and Edgar rushed across to light a candle. Wilmet alone had not stirred, as Bernard lay asleep across her lap. The flash of the match revealed a mass of light disordered heads, and likewise a black figure in the door-way.
'Here is a kind helper for you, Wilmet,' said Mr. Audley, 'from St. Faith's, at Dearport. You must call her Sister Constance.'
Wilmet did rise now, in some consternation, lifting her little brother, whose hand was still in the locks, the tangling of which had been his solace. There was a sweet warm kiss on her brow, and her lost net was picked up, her hair coiled into it by a pair of ready tender hands, but she faltered, 'Oh, thank you. Does Mamma know?'
'She was there when I got a sort of consent from your father,' said Mr. Audley.
'She has not said a word,' said Alda, half resentfully. 'We have hardly been in all day except just to fetch and carry.'
'Never mind,' said the Sister, 'it is much better that she did not think about it. Now, my dear, don't! I won't have anything done for me. You don't know how we Sisters sleep on nothing when we do sleep.'
'But you'll have some tea,' said Alda, the only smooth-haired one of the party.
'When you do, perhaps, thank you. Will you come to me, my dear?' relieving Felix from Angela. 'What is your name?' and the child, though ordinarily very shy, clung to her at once; while she, moving over to Cherry, found her in tears, shook up her cushion, arranged her rug, and made her comfortable in a moment. A sense came over them all that they had among them a head on whom they might rest their cares; and as the black bonnet and veil were taken off, and they saw a sweet fair motherly face beaming on them from the white plain-bordered cap, they gathered round with an outpouring of confidence, small and great, while Mr. Audley went upstairs to announce what he had done. He presently returned, saying, 'All right! Perhaps you had better come up at once.'
There they sat, on either side of the hearth, he pillowed up and in a dressing-gown, more entirely the sick man than he had ever before given up himself to be. Mrs. Underwood rose, and with tears in her eyes, mutely held out her hand, while her husband at once recognised Sister Constance as Lady Herbert Somerville, the wife of the late rector of Dearport. He had last met her when, some six or seven years before, he had been invited to preach at festivals at Dearport, and had seen her the sunbeam of her house. He knew that her husband, who was a connection of Mr. Audley's, had since died of the same malady as his own, and had left her, a childless widow, together with all else he had to leave, to the Sisterhood they had already founded in the seaport town. But his greeting was, 'This is very good in you; but surely it must be too painful for you.'
'The Superior saw how much I wished it,' she said.
'You are like Alexandrine de la Ferronays,' he said, remembering her love for tending a consumptive priest for her husband's sake.
'I am always wishing that I were!' she said.
So they perfectly understood each other; and poor Mrs. Underwood, who had, in her new and extraordinary petulance, fiercely resisted the doctor's recommendation of a nurse, found herself implicitly relying on and trusting Sister Constance with a wonderful sense of reliefa relief perhaps still greater to the patient himself, who had silently endured more discomforts, and made more exertions than she knew, rather than tire her or vex her by employing even son or daughter, and who was besides set free from some amount of anxiety.
Indeed the widow had too perfect a sympathy to interfere with the wife's only comfort. When it could safely be done, she left the two alone together, and applied herself to winning the hearts and soothing the spirits of the poor children downstairs, and suggesting and compounding new nourishing delicacies.
She even persuaded Mrs. Underwood to go to the next room for a night's rest while she sat up, and learntwhat the silent wife had never told any onehow trying the nights were even to that spirit! At first the patient liked to talk, and drew out much of the hidden treasure of her spirit respecting her husband, who, though ailing for years, had finally passed away with only the immediate warning of a weekthe final cause being harass from the difficulties from those above and below him that beset an earnest clergyman of his way of thinking.
What struck her, as it did all, was Mr. Underwood's perfect absence of all care, and conviction that all the burthen was taken off his hands. Her own husband had, as she could not help telling him, found it hard to resign himself to leaving his plans half carried out to instruments which he had but half formed. He had wished with all his might to live, and though he had resigned himself dutifully, it had been with a real struggle, and a longing for continued service rather than rest, a hope that he should more efficiently serve, and much difficulty in refraining from laying all about him under injunctions for the future.
Mr. Underwood half smiled. 'I am neither head nor principal,' he said. 'Plans have been over long ago. I am only tired out, too tired to think about what is to follow. If I live three days longer I shall have just had my forty years in the wilderness, and though it has blossomed like a rose, I am glad to be near the rest.'
And then he asked for the Midnight Office; and afterwards came fitful sleep, half dreamy, half broken by the wanderings of slight feverishness and great weakness; but she thought her attendance would not be very brief, and agreed mentally with what Mr. Audley had told her, that the doctor said that the end might yet be many weeks away. When in the dark winter's morning the wife crept back again to her post, and all that could be done in those early hours had been effected, Sister Constance went to the half-past seven o'clock service with Felix and Clement, imparting to them on the road that the Superior of St. Faith's was expecting to receive some of the least of the children in the course of the day, to remain there for the present.
Mr. Underwood half smiled. 'I am neither head nor principal,' he said. 'Plans have been over long ago. I am only tired out, too tired to think about what is to follow. If I live three days longer I shall have just had my forty years in the wilderness, and though it has blossomed like a rose, I am glad to be near the rest.'
And then he asked for the Midnight Office; and afterwards came fitful sleep, half dreamy, half broken by the wanderings of slight feverishness and great weakness; but she thought her attendance would not be very brief, and agreed mentally with what Mr. Audley had told her, that the doctor said that the end might yet be many weeks away. When in the dark winter's morning the wife crept back again to her post, and all that could be done in those early hours had been effected, Sister Constance went to the half-past seven o'clock service with Felix and Clement, imparting to them on the road that the Superior of St. Faith's was expecting to receive some of the least of the children in the course of the day, to remain there for the present.
Both boys declared it would be an infinite relief, but they doubted exceedingly whether either father or mother would consent to lose sight of them, since the former never failed to see each child, and give it a smile and kiss, if no more. If they were to be sent, Felix supposed there was no one but himself to take them; nobody with whom they would be happy could be spared, nor did he show any repugnance to the notion of acting père de famille to three babies on the railway.
It was quickly settled. Mr. Underwood at once confessed the exceeding kindness, and declared it to be much better for everybody. 'Do you not feel it so, Mother?'
She bent her head in assent, as she did to all he said.
'Having them back will be good for you,' he added persuasively; and again she tried to give a look of response. So they were broughtRobina, Angela, and Bernardand each stood for a moment on a chair at his bed-side. The two little ones he merely kissed and blessed; but to Robina he said a few more words about being good, and minding Mamma and Felix.
'Oh yes, papa! And they'll have a Christmas tree! and I'll save all my bon-bons to make your cough well.'
He watched wistfully as the bright heads passed out of sight, and the long struggling cough and gasping that followed had all the pangs of parting to add to their burthen. Half the family escorted Felix and his charge to the station; and in the quiet that followed, Sister Constance had a good sleep on Wilmet's bed, as much, she said, as she ever required; and she came from it all freshness and brightness, making the dinner-time very charming to all the diminished party, though Wilmet felt greatly lost without the little ones; and afterwards she earned the warmest gratitude from Edgar and Geraldine by looking over their drawings and giving them some valuable hintsnay, she even devised the new and delightful occupation of ship-building for those three inconvenient subjects, Clement, Fulbert, and Lancelot. Upstairs or down, all was gentle cheerfulness and patience wherever she went.
Felix came home about five o'clock, and his mother was persuaded to go to lie down while he amused his father with the account of the children's exemplary behaviour, and of their kind welcome at St. Faith's, where he had been kept to dine, feeling, as he said, 'uncommonly queer' at first, but at last deciding, to the great diversion of his father, that the sisters were a set of jolly old girls, but not one equal to 'our Sister Constance.' Then he had seen the church, and was almost bewildered with the beauty of the decorations; and Mr. Underwood, though saying little, evidently much enjoyed his boy's refreshment and pleasure. He certainly seemed no worse, and Mr. Audley was allowed, what he had often asked before, to sit up with him.
But there was much to render it a long, anxious, restless night of a sort of semi-consciousness, and murmuring talk, as if he fancied himself at Vale Leston again. However, when Felix crept in, about four o'clock in the morning, anxious at the sounds he heard, he found him asleep, and this lasted for two or three hours; he woke refreshed, and presently said, 'Epiphany! put back the curtain, that I may see the bright and morning star.'
The morning star was shining in the delicate dawn full in view, and he looked at it with quiet pleasure. 'Mother,' he said, then recollecting himself; 'ah, she is resting! Thank you, Audley.'
At that moment a little cry through the thin wall made him start and flush.
'Is it so?' he murmured; 'thank God! That is well!' But his chest heaved grievously as he panted with anxiety, and his two watchers hesitated what to do, until the door was slightly opened, and before the intended sign could be made to Felix, the breathless exclamation, 'How? what?' brought Sibby's half-scared mournful countenance forward.
'How is she, Sibby? don't fear to say,' he said, more collectedly.
'Nicely, sir, as well as can be expected; but'
'The baby? AliveI heard'
'Yes, sir; that isO Sir, it is two; and it would be a mere mercy if they are taken, as they look like to betwins, and coming like this!' Perhaps Sibby was a little more lamentable, because, instead of looking shocked, he clasped his hands in eager thanksgiving, as he looked upwards.
Sister Constance followed at the same moment, saying in a far more encouraging voice, 'She is doing very well.'
'It is another great mercy,' he said. 'Much better than longer waiting on me. Will these Twelfth-day gifts live? Or do I take them with me? At least, let me baptize themnow at once,' he spoke earnestly. 'My full twelve, and one over, and on Twelfth-day.'
Sister Constance had better hopes of the babes than Sibby, but this wish of his was one not to be withstood for a moment; and she went to make ready, while Mr. Audley went down for the little Parian font, and Felix and Sibby arranged the pillows and coverings. Mr. Underwood looked very bright and thankful. 'Birth-day gifts,' he said, 'what are they? You have not told me, Sibby.'
'Boy and girl, sir,' she said, 'poor little dears!'
'Jealous for your old twins, Sibby?' he said, smiling.
'Ah! sir, they came in a better time.'
'Better for them, no doubt; but this is the best for these,' he answered brightly. 'See, Sibby, can't you be thankful, like me, that your mistress is sheltered from what would try her? I can bear it all better without her to see.'
Sibby's only reply was a gush of tears, and presently all was made ready; Geraldine was quietly helped into the room by Edgar, and placed in her usual station by the pillow, and the boys stood against the wall, while the two babes, tiny and scarcely animate things, were carried, each by one of the elder pair; and the father, as whitely robed as if he had been in his surplice, held out his hands, and smiled with his kindly lips and clear shining blue eyes full of welcome.
'Has your mother any wishes about names?' he asked. 'Wilmetwhat?'
'No, Papa, I think not;' but her eyes were brimming over with tears, and it was plain that something was suppressed.
'My dear, let me hear; I am not to be hurt by such things.'
'It isit is onlyshe did say, when we came for them, that we were the children of joythese are the children of sorrow,' murmured Wilmet, uttering the words with difficulty.
'I thought so,' he said; then after a brief pause, 'Now, Audley'
For Mr. Audley said all the previous prayers, though with a voice as hard to control as Wilmet's had been. Then Wilmet held her charge close to her father, for, almost inappreciable as the weight was, he could only venture to lay one arm round that grasshopper burthen, as with his long thin fingers he dashed the water. 'Theodore Benjamin, I baptize thee.' Alda brought the other. 'Stella Eudora.' Then the two hands were folded over his face, and they all knelt round till he moved and smiled.