Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell [read this if TXT] 📗

on the scenes that were passing through her mind—that, somehow, they were long gone by, and gone by for ever—and yet she could not remember who she was now, nor where she was, and whether she had now any interests in life to take the place of those which she was conscious had passed away, although their remembrance filled her mind with painful acuteness. Her head lay on her arms, and they rested on the table. Every now and then she opened her eyes, and saw the large room, handsomely furnished with articles that were each one incongruous with the other, as if bought at sales. She saw the flickering night-light—she heard the ticking of the watch, and the two breathings, each going on at a separate rate—one hurried, abruptly stopping, and then panting violently, as if to make up for lost time; and the other slow, steady, and regular, as if the breather was asleep; but this supposition was contradicted by an occasional repressed sound of yawning. The sky through the uncurtained window looked dark and black—would this night never have an end? Had the sun gone down for ever, and would the world at last awaken to a general sense of everlasting night?

Then she felt as if she ought to get up, and go and see how the troubled sleeper in yonder bed was struggling through his illness; but she could not remember who the sleeper was, and she shrunk from seeing some phantom-face on the pillow, such as now began to haunt the dark corners of the room, and look at her, jibbering and mowing as they looked. So she covered her face again, and sank into a whirling stupor of sense and feeling. By-and-by she heard her fellow-watcher stirring, and a dull wonder stole over her as to what he was doing; but the heavy languor pressed her down, and kept her still. At last she heard the words, “Come here,” and listlessly obeyed the command. She had to steady herself in the rocking chamber before she could walk to the bed by which Mr. Davis stood; but the effort to do so roused her, and, though conscious of an oppressive headache, she viewed with sudden and clear vision all the circumstances of her present position. Mr. Davis was near the head of the bed, holding the night-lamp high, and shading it with his hand, that it might not disturb the sick person, who lay with his face towards them, in feeble exhaustion, but with every sign that the violence of the fever had left him. It so happened that the rays of the lamp fell bright and full upon Ruth’s countenance, as she stood with her crimson lips parted with the hurrying breath, and the fever-flush brilliant on her cheeks. Her eyes were wide open, and their pupils distended. She looked on the invalid in silence, and hardly understood why Mr. Davis had summoned her there.

“Don’t you see the change? He is better!—the crisis is past!”

But she did not speak her looks were riveted on his softly-unclosing eyes, which met hers as they opened languidly. She could not stir or speak. She was held fast by that gaze of his, in which a faint recognition dawned, and grew to strength.

He murmured some words. They strained their sense to hear. He repeated them even lower than before; but this time they caught what he was saying.

“Where are the water-lilies? Where are the lilies in her hair?”

Mr. Davis drew Ruth away.

“He is still rambling,” said he. “But the fever has left him.”

The grey dawn was now filling the room with its cold light; was it that made Ruth’s cheek so deadly pale? Could that call out the wild entreaty of her look, as if imploring help against some cruel foe that held her fast, and was wrestling with her Spirit of Life? She held Mr. Davis’s arm. If she had let it go, she would have fallen.

“Take me home,” she said, and fainted dead away.

Mr. Davis carried her out of the chamber, and sent the groom to keep watch by his master. He ordered a fly to convey her to Mr. Benson’s, and lifted her in when it came, for she was still half unconscious. It was he who carried her upstairs to her room, where Miss Benson and Sally undressed and laid her in her bed.

He awaited their proceedings in Mr. Benson’s study. When Mr. Benson came in, Mr. Davis said—

“Don’t blame me. Don’t add to my self-reproach. I have killed her. I was a cruel fool to let her go. Don’t speak to me.”

“It may not be so bad,” said Mr. Benson, himself needing comfort in that shock.

“She may recover. She surely will recover. I believe she will.”

“No, no! she won’t. But by–-she shall, if I can save her.” Mr. Davis looked defiantly at Mr. Benson, as if he were Fate. “I tell you she shall recover, or else I am a murderer. What business had I to take her to nurse him–-”

He was cut short by Sally’s entrance and announcement, that Ruth was now prepared to see him.

From that time forward Mr. Davis devoted all his leisure, his skill, his energy, to save her. He called on the rival surgeon, to beg him to undertake the management of Mr. Donne’s recovery, saying, with his usual self-mockery, “I could not answer it to Mr. Cranworth if I had brought his opponent round, you know, when I had had such a fine opportunity in my power. Now, with your patients, and general Radical interest, it will be rather a feather in your cap; for he may want a good deal of care yet, though he is getting on famously—so rapidly, in fact, that it’s a strong temptation to me to throw him back—a relapse, you know.”

The other surgeon bowed gravely, apparently taking Mr. Davis in earnest, but certainly very glad of the job thus opportunely thrown in his way. In spite of Mr. Davis’s real and deep anxiety about Ruth, he could not help chuckling over his rival’s literal interpretation of all he had said.

“To be sure, what fools men are! I don’t know why one should watch and strive to keep them in the world. I have given this fellow something to talk about confidently to all his patients; I wonder how much stronger a dose the man would have swallowed! I must begin to take care of my practice for that lad yonder. Well-a-day! well-a-day! What was this sick fine gentleman sent here for, that she should run a chance of her life for him? or why was he sent into the world at all, for that matter?”

Indeed, however much Mr. Davis might labour with all his professional skill—however much they might all watch—and pray—and weep—it was but too evident that Ruth “home must go, and take her wages.” Poor, poor Ruth! It might be that, utterly exhausted by watching and nursing, first in the hospital, and than by the bedside of her former lover, the power of her constitution was worn out; or, it might be, her gentle, pliant sweetness, but she displayed no outrage or discord even in her delirium. There she lay in the attic-room in which her baby had been born, her watch over him kept, her confession to him made; and now she was stretched on the bed in utter helplessness, softly gazing at vacancy with her open, unconscious eyes, from which all the depth of their meaning had fled, and all they told of was of a sweet, childlike insanity within. The watchers could not touch her with their sympathy, or come near her in her dim world;—so, mutely, but looking at each other from time to time with tearful eyes, they took a poor comfort from the one evident fact that, though lost and gone astray, she was happy and at peace. They had never heard her sing; indeed, the simple art which her mother had taught her, had died, with her early joyousness, at that dear mother’s death. But now she sang continually, very slow, and low. She went from one old childish ditty to another without let or pause, keeping a strange sort of time with her pretty fingers, as they closed and unclosed themselves upon the counterpane. She never looked at any one with the slightest glimpse of memory or intelligence in her face; no, not even Leonard.

Her strength faded day by day; but she knew it not. Her sweet lips were parted to sing, even after the breath and the power to do so had left her, and her fingers fell idly on the bed. Two days she lingered thus—all but gone from them, and yet still there.

They stood around her bedside, not speaking, or sighing, or moaning; they were too much awed by the exquisite peacefulness of her look for that. Suddenly she opened wide her eyes, and gazed intently forwards, as if she saw some happy vision, which called out a lovely, rapturous, breathless smile. They held their very breaths.

“I see the Light coming,” said she. “The Light is coming,” she said. And, raising herself slowly, she stretched out her arms, and then fell back, very still for evermore.

They did not speak. Mr. Davis was the first to utter a word.

“It is over!” said he. “She is dead!”

Out rang through the room the cry of Leonard—

“Mother! mother! mother! You have not left me alone! You will not leave me alone! You are not dead! Mother! Mother!”

They had pent in his agony of apprehension till then, that no wail of her child might disturb her ineffable calm. But now there was a cry heard through the house, of one refusing to be comforted: “Mother! Mother!”

But Ruth lay dead.