The Allen House; Or, Twenty Years Ago and Now

“Sick, it may be, unto death.”

There was no emotion in her voice.

I looked at her without replying.

“I can see them die, Doctor, if that must be.”

Oh, that icy coldness of manner, how it chilled me!

“No hand but mine shall tend them now, Doctor. They have been long enough in the care of others—neglected—almost forgotten—by their unworthy mother. But in this painful extremity I will be near them. I come back to the post of duty, even at this late hour, and all that is left for me, that will I do.”

I was deeply touched by her words and manner.

The latter softened a little as she uttered the closing sentence.

“You look at the darkest side,” I answered. “With God are the issues of life. He calls us, our children, or our friends, in His own good time. We cannot tell how any sickness will terminate; and hope for the best is always our truest state.”

“I hope for the best,” she replied; but with something equivocal in her voice.

“The best is life,” I said, scarcely reflecting upon my words.

“Not always,” she returned, still speaking calmly. “Death is often the highest blessing that God can give. It will be so in the present case.”

“Madam!”

My tone of surprise did not move her.

“It is simply true, Doctor,” she made answer. “As things are now, and as they promise to be in the future, the safest place for these helpless innocents is in Heaven; and I feel that their best Friend is about to remove them there through the door of sickness.”

I could not bear to hear her talk in this way. It sent cold chills through me. So I changed the subject.

On the next day, all the symptoms were unfavorable. Mrs. Dewey was calm as when I last saw her; but it was plain from her appearance, that she had taken little if any rest. Her manner towards the sick babes was full of tenderness; but there was no betrayal of weakness or distress in view of a fatal termination. She made no anxious inquiries, such as are pressed on physicians in cases of dangerous illness; but received my directions, and promised to give them a careful observance, with a self-possession that showed not a sign of wavering strength.

I was touched by all this. How intense must have been the suffering that could so benumb the heart!—that could prepare a mother to sit by the couch of her sick babes, and be willing to see them die! I have witnessed many sad scenes in professional experience; but none so sad as this.

Steadily did the destroyer keep on with his work. There were none of those flattering changes that sometimes cheat us into hopes of recovery, but a regular daily accumulation of the most unfavorable symptoms. At the end of a week, I gave up all hope of saving the children, and made no more vain attempts to control a disease that had gone on from tie beginning, steadily breaking away the foundations of life. To diminish the suffering of my little patients, and make their passage from earth to Heaven as easy as possible, was now my only care.

On the mother’s part, there was no sign of wavering. Patiently, tenderly, faithfully did she minister to her little ones, night and day. No lassitude or weariness appeared, though her face, which grew paler and thinner every day, told the story of exhausting nature. She continued in the same state of mind I have described; never for an instant, as far as I could see, receding from a full consent to their removal.

One morning, in making my usually early call at the Allen House, I saw, what I was not unprepared to see, a dark death sign on the door.

“All over?” I said to the servant who admitted me.

“Yes, sir, all is over,” she replied.

“Both gone?”

“Yes, sir, both.”

Tears were in her eyes.

“When did they die?”

“About midnight.”

“At the same time?”

“Yes, sir. Dear little souls! They went together.”

“I will go up to see them,” said I.

And the girl showed me to the room in which they were laid. The door was closed. I opened it, and stepped in softly. The room was darkened; but light came in through a small opening in the curtains at the top of the window, and fell in a narrow circle around the spot where the bodies, already in their snowy grave clothes, were laid. In a chair beside them sat the mother. She was alone with her dead. I felt that I was an intruder upon a sorrow too deep for tears or words; but it was too late to recede. So I moved forward and stood by the bedside, looking down upon the two white little faces, from which had passed every line of suffering.

Mrs. Dewey neither stirred nor spoke, nor in any way gave token that she was aware of my presence in the room. I stood for over a minute looking upon the sweet images before me—for in them, death had put on forms of beauty—and still there was no movement on the part of Mrs. Dewey. Then, feeling that she was with One who could speak to her heart by an inner way, better than I could speak through the natural ear, I quietly receded and left the apartment. As my eyes rested on her a moment, in closing the door, I saw that her form remained as still as a statue.

CHAPTER XXIII

An hour later, when Constance went to see Mrs. Dewey, she found her in a state of unconsciousness, nature having at last given way. Not long after I left the house, her mother, on entering the room where the children were laid out, found her insensible, lying across the bed, with her dead babes clasped in her arms.

Mrs. Floyd sent word for me to come and see her daughter, as she continued in a lethargic state. I found her like one in a deep sleep, only her breathing was light, and her pulse very feeble, but regular. She was out of the reach of my skill, and in the hands of the Great Physician. I could only trust the cure to Him. No medicine for the body would be of any avail here. I called again in the afternoon; but found no change. How little was there in the pale, pinched face that lay among the white pillows, to remind me of the handsome, dashing Mrs. Dewey, of a year gone by!

“What do you think of her, Doctor?”

Mrs. Floyd put the question. The tone had in it something that made me look narrowly into the speaker’s face. My ears had not deceived me.

There was the wish in her heart that Delia might die!

I was not surprised at this. And yet the revelation of such a state of feeling, in so good and true a woman, as I had reason to know Mrs. Floyd to be, made my heart bound with a throb of pain.

Alas! alas! Into what unnatural conditions may not the mind fall, through suffering that shuts out human hope!

“Nature,” said I, in answer to the question of Mrs. Floyd, “may be only gathering up her powers after a long period of exhaustion. The strife through which your daughter has passed—calmly passed to all external seeming—has not been without a wasting of internal life. How she kept on so evenly to the end, passes my comprehension. There is not one woman in a thousand who could have so borne herself through to the final act. It is meet that she should rest now.”

“If she were sleeping with her babes, happy would it be for her!”

Tears fell over the face of Mrs. Floyd.

“God knows what is best,” I remarked.

“She has nothing to live for in this world.” A sob broke from its repression, and heaved the mother’s bosom. “O Doctor, if I saw the death dews on her brow, I would not weep!”

“Leave her, my dear friend,” said I, “in the hands of Him who sees deeper into the heart than it is possible for our eyes to penetrate. Her feet have left the soft, flowery ways they trod for a time, and turned into rough paths, where every footfall is upon sharp stones; but it may be that a blessed land is smiling beyond, he has been astray in the world, and God may only be leading her homeward by the way of sorrow.”

Mrs. Floyd wept freely as I talked.

“His will be done,” she said, sobbing.

“Your daughter,” said I, taking the occasion to bear my testimony on the favorable side, “has been wronged without question. She was doubtless imprudent, but not sinful; and the present attempt to disgrace her I regard as a cruel wrong. It will recoil, I trust, in a way not dreamed of.”