She drew back suddenly with a movement of alarm--checked herself the instant after, and bent down over the pillow again. But it was too late. Her hand had moved abruptly when she drew back, and her mother awoke with a start and a faint cry--with vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and with the perspiration standing thick on her forehead.
"Mother!" cried Rosamond, raising her on the pillow. "I have come back. Don't you know me?"
"Mother?" she repeated, in mournful, questioning tones-- "Mother?" At the second repetition of the word a bright flush of delight and surprise broke out on her face, and she clasped both arms suddenly round her daughter's neck. "Oh, my own Rosamond!" she said. "If I had ever been used to waking up and seeing your dear face look at me, I should have known you sooner, in spite of my dream! Did you wake me, my love? or did I wake myself?"
"I am afraid I awoke you, mother."
"Don't say 'afraid.' I would wake from the sweetest sleep that ever woman had to see your face and to hear you say 'mother' to me. You have delivered me, my love, from the terror of one of my dreadful dreams. Oh, Rosamond! I think I should live to be happy in your love, if I could only get Porthgenna Tower out of my mind--if I could only never remember again the bed-chamber where my mistress died, and the room where I hid the letter--"
"We will try and forget Porthgenna Tower now," said Rosamond. "Shall we talk about other places where I have lived, which you have never seen? Or shall I read to you, mother? Have you got any book here that you are fond of?"
She looked across the bed at the table on the other side. There was nothing on it but some bottles of medicine, a few of Uncle Joseph's flowers in a glass of water, and a little oblong work-box. She looked round at the chest of drawers behind her--there were no books placed on the top of it. Before she turned toward the bed again, her eyes wandered aside to the window. The sun was lost beyond the distant house-tops; the close of day was near at hand.
"If I could forget! Oh, me, if I could only forget!" said her mother, sighing wearily, and beating her hand on the coverlid of the bed.
"Are you well enough, dear, to amuse yourself with work?" asked Rosamond, pointing to the little oblong box on the table, and trying to lead the conversation to a harmless, every-day topic, by asking questions about it. "What work do you do? May I look at it?"
Her face lost its weary, suffering look, and brightened once more into a smile. "There is no work there," she said. "All the treasures I had in the world, till you came to see me, are shut up in that one little box. Open it, my love, and look inside."
Rosamond obeyed, placing the box on the bed where her mother could see it easily. The first object that she discovered inside was a little book, in dark, worn binding. It was an old copy of Wesley's Hymns. Some withered blades of grass lay between its pages; and on one of its blank leaves was this inscription--"Sarah Leeson, her book. The gift of Hugh Polwheal."
"Look at it, my dear," said her mother. "I want you to know it again. When my time comes to leave you, Rosamond, lay it on my bosom with your own dear hands, and put a little morsel of your hair with it, and bury me in the grave in Porthgenna churchyard, where he has been waiting for me to come to him so many weary years. The other things in the box, Rosamond, belong to you; they are little stolen keepsakes that used to remind me of my child, when I was alone in the world. Perhaps, years and years hence, when your brown hair begins to grow gray like mine, you may like to show these poor trifles to your children when you talk about me. Don't mind telling them, Rosamond, how your mother sinned and how she suffered--you can always let these little trifles speak for her at the end. The least of them will show that she always loved you."
She took out of the box a morsel of neatly folded white paper, which had been placed under the book of Wesley's Hymns, opened it, and showed her daughter a few faded laburnum leaves that lay inside. "I took these from your bed, Rosamond, when I came, as a stranger, to nurse you at West Winston. I tried to take a ribbon out of your trunk, love, after I had taken the flowers--a ribbon that I knew had been round your neck. But the doctor came near at the time, and frightened me."
She folded the paper up again, laid it aside on the table, and drew from the box next a small print which had been taken from the illustrations to a pocket-book. It represented a little girl, in gypsy-hat, sitting by the water-side, and weaving a daisy chain. As a design, it was worthless; as a print, it had not even the mechanical merit of being a good impression. Underneath it a line was written in faintly penciled letters--"Rosamond when I last saw her."
"It was never pretty enough for you," she said. "But still there was something in it that helped me to remember what my own love was like when she was a little girl."
She put the engraving aside with the laburnum leaves, and took from the box a leaf of a copy-book, folded in two, out of which there dropped a tiny strip of paper, covered with small printed letters. She looked at the strip of paper first. "The advertisement of your marriage, Rosamond," she said. "I used to be fond of reading it over and over again to myself when I was alone, and trying to fancy how you looked and what dress you wore. If I had only known when you were going to be married, I would have ventured into the church, my love, to look at you and at your husband. But that was not to be--and perhaps it was best so, for the seeing you in that stolen way might only have made my trials harder to bear afterward. I have had no other keepsake to remind me of you, Rosamond, except this leaf out of your first copy-book. The nurse-maid at Porthgenna tore up the rest one day to light the fire, and I took this leaf when she was not looking. See! you had not got as far as words then--you could only do up-strokes and down-strokes. Oh me! how many times I have sat looking at this one leaf of paper, and trying to fancy that I saw your small child's hand traveling over it, with the pen held tight in the rosy little fingers. I think I have cried oftener, my darling, over that first copy of yours than over all my other keepsakes put together."
Rosamond turned aside her face toward the window to hide the tears which she could restrain no longer.
As she wiped them away, the first sight of the darkening sky warned her that the twilight dimness was coming soon. How dull and faint the glow in the west looked now! how near it was to the close of day!
When she turned toward the bed again, her mother was still looking at the leaf of the copy-book.
"That nursemaid who tore up all the rest of it to light the fire," she said, "was a kind friend to me in those early days at Porthgenna. She used sometimes to let me put you to bed, Rosamond; and never asked questions, or teased me, as the rest of them did. She risked the loss of her place by being so good to me. My mistress was afraid of my betraying myself and betraying her if I was much in the nursery, and she gave orders that I was not to go there, because it was not my place. None of the other women-servants were so often stopped from playing with you and kissing you, Rosamond, as I was. But the nurse-maid--God bless and prosper her for it!--stood my friend. I often lifted you into your little cot, my love, and wished you good-night, when my mistress thought I was at work in her room. You used to say you liked your nurse better than you liked me, but you never told me so fretfully; and you always put your laughing lips up to mine whenever I asked you for a kiss!"
Rosamond laid her head gently on the pillow by the side of her mother's. "Try to think less of the past, dear, and more of the future," she whispered pleadingly; "try to think of the time when my child will help you to recall those old days without their sorrow--the time when you will teach him to put his lips up to yours, as I used to put mine."
"I will try, Rosamond--but my only thoughts of the future, for years and years past, have been thoughts of meeting you in heaven.