What She Could Part 27

"Get well, I hope. That is the first thing. Aunt Candy says she will pay for her board and Clarissa's, and mamma and you can live on that.

Letty and I must go get our living--somehow."

And here Anne broke down. Matilda wanted to ask about Maria's fate in the general falling to pieces of the family; but her throat felt so full, she was afraid she could not. So she did not try; she turned and went down-stairs to her mother.

Mrs. Englefield was dozing, flushed and uneasy; she hardly noticed who was with her; but asked for water, and then for Cologne water. Matilda brought the one and the other, and sat by the bedside wiping her mother's brow and cheeks with the Cologne. n.o.body came to interrupt or relieve her for some time. The light of the afternoon began to fade, and the sunbeams came aslant from the western sky; and still the child sat there pa.s.sing the handkerchief gently over her mother's face. And while she sat so, Matilda was thinking what possible ways there might be by which she could make money.

"Tilly, is that you?" said Mrs. Englefield, faintly, as the sunbeams were just quitting the room.

"Yes, mamma. Are you better?"

"Is there no one else here?"

"No, mamma. Aunt Candy is out; and I suppose the girls thought you were sleeping. Are you better, mamma? You have had a nice long nap."

"It's been horrid!" said Mrs. Englefield. "I have dreamed of every possible dreadful thing."

"But you feel better now?"

"My head aches--no--oh, my head! Tilly----"

"What, mamma?"

"I am going to be sick. I shan't be about again for a while, I know. I want you to do just what I tell you."

"Yes, mamma. What?"

"Anne and Letty are going away."

"Yes, mamma. I know."

"Do you know why, dear?"

The tone of tender, sorrowful sympathy in which this was said, overcame the child. As her mother's eyes with the question languidly sought her face, Matilda burst into tears and threw herself upon her neck.

"No, don't," said Mrs. Englefield, faintly,--"I can't bear it. Don't, Matilda! Rise up and listen to me."

Matilda did as she was told. She forced back her tears; stopped her sobs; dashed away the drops from the corners of her eyes; and sat up again to hear what her mother had to say to her.

"Give me some more water first. Anne and Letty are going away, Tilly; and I cannot be up and see to anything; and I can't hire a woman to do what's to be done. You tell Maria, from me, she must stay home from school and take care of the house. You will do what you can, Tilly--oh, my head!--you can put rooms in order and such things; and Maria must go down into the kitchen and get the breakfast----"

"Must Maria get the dinner too, mamma?"

"Yes, the dinner----"

"But _can_ she, mamma?"

"She _must;_ or else your aunt Candy will hire somebody to do it; and that will come out of what she pays me, and we shall not have enough left. She _must_, Tilly."

"But aunt Candy wouldn't mind, just while you are sick, mamma, would she?"

"Yes! I know. Just you do as I tell you; promise me that you will."

"I will, mamma."

"Promise me that Maria will."

"I guess she will, mamma. I'll try and make her. Shall I bring her here, and you tell her yourself?"

"No, indeed. Don't bring Maria here. She would make such a row she would kill me. Anne and Letty will see to things, till they go--oh, I can't talk any longer. Give me some more water."

She was presently dozing again; and Matilda, clasping her small hands, sat and thought over what was before her. It began to feel like a weight on her somewhere--on her shoulders, she thought, and lying on her heart too; and the longer she thought about it, the heavier and harder it pressed. The family to be broken up; her mother to be straitened for money--Matilda did not know very well what that meant, but it sounded disagreeable; her aunt suddenly presented in new and not pleasant colours; a general threatening cloud overshadowing all the future. Matilda began to get, what her strong little heart was not accustomed to, a feeling of real discouragement. What could she do? And then a word of the afternoon's lesson in the Sunday-School came freshly to mind. It had been quite new to Matilda, and had seemed to her very beautiful; but it took on quite another sort of beauty now,--"Cast thy burden upon the Lord; He shall sustain thee."

"Will He?" thought Matilda. "Can He? May I tell Him about all this? and will He help me to bear it, and help me to do all that work, and to make Maria do hers? But He will, _for He has said so_."

It was getting dusk in the room. Matilda knelt down by her chair, and poured out all her troubles into the Ear that would heed and could help her.

"Who's here?" said the voice of Mrs. Candy, coming in. "Who is that?

Matilda? How did you come here, Tilly?"

"I have been taking care of my mother."

"Have you? How is she? Well, you run down-stairs; I'll take care of her now. It is better for you not to be here. Don't come in again, unless I give you leave. Now you may go."

"I wonder, must I mind her?" said Matilda to herself. "I do not see why. She is not mother; and if mother is sick, that does not give everybody else a right to say what I shall do. I think it is very queer of Aunt Candy to take that way with me."

And I am afraid Matilda's head was carried a little with the air which was, to be sure, natural to her, and not unpretty, and yet which spoke of a good deal of conscious competency. It is no more than justice to Matilda to say that she did not ever put the feeling into any ill-mannerly form. It hardly appeared at all, except in this turn of her head, which all her own family knew, laughed at, admired, and even loved. So she went down-stairs to the parlour.

"How is Aunt Marianne?" was the question from Clarissa. "Letty told me where you were. But, little one, it is not good for you to go into your mother's sick-room; you can do nothing, and you are better out. So mamma wishes you not to go in there till Aunt Marianne is better--you understand?"

"Clarissa too!" thought Matilda to herself. But she made no answer. She came by the fire to warm herself; for her mother's room had been cold.

"You shouldn't go so near the fire; you'll burn your dress," Clarissa remarked.

"No," said Matilda; and she said but that one word.

"You will take the colour out, if you do not set it on fire; and that is what I meant. That is your best dress, Tilly."

It was true; and, sorely against her will, Matilda stepped a little back.

"You were a great while at Sunday-School to-day," Clarissa went on.

"No," said Matilda; "not longer than usual."

"What do you learn there?"

"Why, cousin Issa, what do you teach at _your_ Sunday-School?" said Matilda. For Clarissa had sheered off from Mr. Richmond's church, and gone into a neighbouring one which belonged to the denomination in which she had been brought up.

"That is not good manners to answer one question with another, little one."