The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [4]
When the flame burned clearly she took the candle to the bedside, and, bending down, held it close to the face of the old woman who was lying there. The eyes opened and turned towards the overhanging face: small dim, blue eyes, full of the stupor of illness, looking out of the pathetically commonplace little old face with a far-away perplexity.
“Was that Francie that was at the door?” she said in a drowsy voice that had in it the lagging drawl of intense weakness.
Charlotte took the tiny wrist in her hand, and felt the pulse with professional attention. Her broad perceptive finger-tips gauged the forces of the little thread that was jerking in the thin network of tendons, and as she laid the hand down she said to herself, “She’ll not last out the turn of the night.”
“Why doesn’t Francie come in?” murmured the old woman again in the fragmentary, uninflected voice that seems hardly spared from the unseen battle with death.
“It wasn’t her you asked me for at all,” answered Charlotte. “You said you wanted to say good-bye to Susan. Here, you’d better have a sip of this.”
The old woman swallowed some brandy and water, and the stimulant presently revived unexpected strength in her.
“Charlotte,” she said, “it isn’t cats we should be thinking of now. God knows the cats are safe with you. But little Francie, Charlotte, we ought to have done more for her. You promised me that if you got the money you’d look after her. Didn’t you now, Charlotte? I wish I’d done more for her. She’s a good little thing—a good little thing—” she repeated dreamily.
Few people would think it worth their while to dispute the wandering futilities of an old dying woman, but even at this eleventh hour Charlotte could not brook the revolt of a slave.
“Good little thing!” she exclaimed, pushing the brandy bottle noisily in among a crowd of glasses and medicine bottles, “a strapping big woman of nineteen! You didn’t think her so good the time you had her here, and she put Susan’s father and mother in the well!”
The old lady did not seem to understand what she had said.
“Susan, Susan!” she called quaveringly, and feebly patted the crochet quilt.
As if in answer, a hand fumbled at the door and opened it softly. Norry was standing there, tall and gaunt, holding in her apron, with both hands, something that looked like an enormous football.
“Miss Charlotte!” she whispered hoarsely, “here’s Susan for ye. He was out in the ashpit, an’ I was hard set to get him, he was that wild.”
Even as she spoke there was a furious struggle in the blue apron.
“God in Heaven! ye fool!” ejaculated Charlotte. “Don’t let him go!” She shut the door behind Norry. “Now, give him to me.”
Norry opened her apron cautiously, and Miss Charlotte lifted out of it a large grey tom-cat.
“Be quiet, my heart’s love,” she said, “be quiet.”
The cat stopped kicking and writhing, and, sprawling up on to the shoulder of the magenta dressing-gown, turned a fierce grey face upon his late captor. Norry crept over to the bed, and put back the dirty chintz curtain that had been drawn forward to keep out the draught of the door. Mrs. Mullen was lying very still; she had drawn her knees up in front of her, and the bedclothes hung sharply from the small point that they made. The big living old woman took the hand of the other old woman who was so nearly dead, and pressed her lips to it.
“Ma’am, d’ye know me?”
Her mistress opened her eyes.
“Norry,” she whispered, “give Miss Francie some jam for her tea to-night, but don’t tell Miss Charlotte.”
“What’s that she’s saying?” said Charlotte, going to the other side of the bed. “Is she asking for me?”
“No, but for Miss Francie,” Norry answered.
“She knows as well as I do that Miss Francie’s in Dublin,” said Charlotte roughly; “‘twas Susan she was asking for last. Here, a’nt, here’s Susan for you.”
She pulled the cat down from her shoulder, and put him on the bed, where he crouched with