Only there came over
her, with a solemn presentiment which had its sweetness still, the
conviction that whatever happiness her lot might have missed, its duties
were very plain, very sure. All her life she would have, more or less, to
take care of, not only these her children, but their father.
She stood beside him, holding his shaking hands between her two firm
ones, till she heard Arthur call faintly.
"I must leave you now. You will go to bed; and oh, do try to sleep.
Poor papa!"
"And you?"
"I shall sit up, of course. Never mind me; I have done it many a time."
"Will you have nobody with you?"
"No. It would disturb Arthur, Hush! there is no time for speaking.
This once you must let me have my way. Good-night, papa."
But for all that, in the dead of the night, she heard the study-door open,
and saw Dr. Grey come stealing in to where she sat watching--as she
was to watch for many a weary day and night--beside his boy's pillow.
He saw her likewise--a figure, the like of which, husband and father as
he had been, he had never seen before. No household experience of his
had ever yet shown him a woman in that light--the dearest light in
which any man can behold her.
A figure, quite different from the stately lady in white splendors of six
hours before, sitting, dressed in a sober, soundless, dark-colored gown,
motionless by the dim lamplight, but with the soft eyes open and
watchful, and the tender hands ever ready for those endless wants of
sickness at night, especially sickness that may be tending unto death, or
unto the awful struggle between life and death, which most women
have at some time of their lives to keep ward over till danger has gone
by--just the sort of figure, in short, that every man is sure to need
beside him, once or more, in his journey between the cradle and the
grave.
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