her feelings toward Kate had been dipped in wormwood.
Zerah was not a bad woman, but she was a disappointed woman. She was disappointed in her husband, disappointed in her child. Her heart was not congealed, nor was her conscience dead, but both were in a torpid condition.
Now, as by the glimmer of the swaling candle she looked on the suffering girl, the ice about her heart cracked--a warm gush of pity, an ache of remorse, came upon her; she bowed and kissed the arched brow of her niece.
The rector knelt and prayed in silence. He loved the intelligent child in his Sunday school--the nightingale in his church choir. Zerah obeyed his example.
Then both heard the stair creak, and a heavy tread sounded on the boards.
Mrs. Pepperill looked round, but the irregular tread would have told her who had entered the attic chamber without the testimony of her eyes. She stood up and signed to Jason Quarm to be less noisy in his movements.
“Pshaw!” said he; “it is nothing. Kitty will get over it. You, Zerah, are tough. I am tough. Leather toughness is the characteristic of us Quarms. When she is better, send her to me--to the moor. That will set her up.”
The rector rose.
Jason went to the head of the bed and laid his large hand on the sick girl’s brow. The coolness of his palm seemed to do her good.
“You see--it comforts the little toad,” said her father. “There is nothing to alarm you in the case. Children are like corks. They go under water and are up again--mostly up. Dipping under is temporary--temporary and soon over. Parson, do you want to speculate? I am buying oak dirt cheap--to sell at a tremendous profit. Ten per cent. at the least. What do you say?”
The rector shook his head.
“Well, I shouldn’t go away from Coombe with Kitty ill but that I expect to make my fortune and hers. She’ll have a dower some day out of the Brimpts oaks.”
Then the man stumped out of the room and down the steep stairs.
Jason Quarm was always sanguine.
“Do you think Kate will live?” asked Zerah, who did not share his views.
“I trust so,” answered the rector. “If she does, then regard her as a gift from heaven. Once before she was put, a frail and feeble object, into your arms to rear and cherish. You were then too much engrossed in your daughter to give to this child your full attention. Your own Wilmot has been taken away. Now your niece has been almost withdrawn from you. But the hand that holds the issues of life and death spares her; she is committed to you once more--again helpless, frail, and committed to you that you may envelop her in an atmosphere of Love.”
“I have loved her,” said Mrs. Pepperill. “This is the second time, sir, that you have charged me with lack of love towards Kate.”
“Wilmot,” said the rector, “was one who stormed the heart. She went up against it, with flags flying and martial music, and broke in at the point of the bayonet. Kate’s nature is different. She will storm no heart. She sits on the doorstep as a beggar, and does not even knock and solicit admission. Throw open your door, extend your hand, and the timid child will falter in, frightened, yet elate with hope.”
“I don’t know,” said Zerah meditatively. “You’ll excuse my saying it, but when a child is heartless”--
“Heartless?--who is heartless?”
“Kate, to be sure.”
“Heartless?” repeated the rector. “You are in grievous error. No child is heartless. None of God’s creatures are void of love. God is love Himself, and we are all made in the image of the Creator. In all of us is the divine attribute of love. We were made to love and to be loved. It is a necessity of our nature. This poor little spirit--with how much love has it been suckled? With how much has its nakedness been clothed? The cream of your heart’s affection was given to your own daughter, and only the whey--thin and somewhat acidulated--offered to the niece. Turn over a new leaf, Mrs. Pepperill. Treat this child in a manner different from that in which she has been treated. I allow frankly that you have not been unkind, unjust, ungracious. But such a soul as this cannot flower in an atmosphere of negatives. You know something about the principle on which the atmospheric railway acts, do you not, Mrs. Pepperill? There is a pump which exhausts the air. Now put a plant, an animal, into a vessel from which the vital air has been withdrawn, and plant or animal will die at once. It has been given nothing deleterious, nothing poisonous has been administered. It dies simply because it has been deprived of that atmosphere in which God ordained that it should live and flourish. My good friend,” said the rector, and his voice shook with mingled tenderness of feeling and humour, “if I were to take you up and set you under the exhausting apparatus, and work at the pump, you would gasp--gasp and die.”
The woman turned cold and blank at the suggestion.
“If I did that,” continued the parson, “the coroner who sat on you would pronounce that you had been murdered by me. I should be sent to the assizes, and should infallibly be hung. Very well: there are other kinds of murder than killing the body. There is the killing of the noble, divine nature in man, and that not by acts of violence only, but by denial of what is essential to its existence. Remember this, Mrs. Pepperill: what the atmosphere is to the lungs, that love is to the heart. God created the lungs to be inflated with air, and the heart to be filled with Love.”
CHAPTER IX
CONVALESCENCE
The voice of Pasco was heard shouting up the stairs to his wife. Mrs. Pepperill, glad to escape the lecture, went to the door and called down, “Don’t make such a noise, when the girl is ill.”
“Come, will you, Zerah; there’s some one wants to have a say with you.”
With a curt excuse to the parson, Mrs. Pepperill descended. She found her husband at the foot of the stairs, with his hand on the banister.
“Pasco,” said she, “what do’y think now? The parson has been accusing me of murdering Kate. If she dies, he says he’ll have me up to Exeter Assizes and hung for it. I’ll never set foot in church again, never--I’ll join the Primitive Methodists.”
“As you please,” said her husband. “But go to the door at once. There is John Pooke waiting, and won’t be satisfied till he has had a talk with you about Kate. He wants to know all about Kitty--how she’s doing, whether she’s in danger, if she wants anything that the Pookes can supply. He’s hanging about the door like what they call a morbid fly. He’s in a terrible taking, and won’t be put off with what I can tell.”
“Well, now,” exclaimed Zerah, “here’s an idea! Something may come of that night on a mud-bank after all, and more than she deserves. Oh my! if my Wilmot was alive, and Jan Pooke were to inquire after her! Go up, Pasco, and send that parson away. I won’t speak to him again--abusing of me and calling me names shameful, and he an ordained minister. What in the world are we coming to?”
When the doctor arrived, he pronounced that he would pull Kate through.
Presently the delirium passed away, and on the following morning the light of intelligence returned
