"No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside he whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and not cry.
Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next half hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nurse spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candles on it.
I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meant that she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it was terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would not find it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning under my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious … " when the nurse said:
"Here they are back again."
Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sight not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits.
A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in the middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like a cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men were carrying torches to light him on his way.
I knew what it was—it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they were bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room, saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white box on the table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestments underneath.
Then the whole of my father's household—all except my father himself—came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who knelt in a group by the door.
Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were inspiring him.
After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction—anointing the sweet eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked in the ways of God.
All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a church—no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes when it is far away and going out.
When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me and being told I was in the cot, she said:
"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now."
A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with my face hidden in her neck.
What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that are forgotten and lost.
"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns.
I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it.
"Not that your father has been to blame—you must never think that, Mary, yet still … "
But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she had to stop.
Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for I said something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweet voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that she was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she would think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watch over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so.
"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always be together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I shall know all about it."
This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though God knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could have seen what was waiting for her child.
It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next.
She told me to say a De Profundis for her sometimes, and to think of her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told me to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it should prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep at night and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again, and "the time between would not seem long."
"So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said.
And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"
When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of the next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out of bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying in a tremulous voice:
"Your dear mother has gone to God."
I began to cry, but he checked me and said:
"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise after all her suffering. Let her go!"
So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel.
It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria.
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my father's house.
Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself more than ever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied half her days with the governess who had been engaged to teach her, and the other half in driving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the houses of the gentry round about.
Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father's secretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a privilege which enlarged her pride without improving her manners.
Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at school the doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in London in order to look at Nansen's ship, the Fram, which had just then arrived in the Thames.
Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me, with its familiar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned with timid steps towards my father's busy room, intending to say, "Please, father, don't send me back to school," I made no demur when, six or seven days after the funeral, Aunt Bridget began to prepare for my departure.
"There's odds of women," said Tommy the Mate, when I went into the garden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is women. If there's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if there isn't you might as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman is hot water—but she'll die for all."
Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the Reverend Mother atoned to me for every neglect.
"I knew you would come back to me," she said, and from that hour onward she seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I had lost.
I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit became my spirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the life of the Convent took complete possession of me.
At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Mother loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, the flowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion, the mysteries of our religion took hold of me—the Confessional with its sense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.