A Dark Night's Work Read Free

characteristics of her love through
life. There was no word passed between them. He could not speak, any
more than could she. He knelt down by her. She was dying; she was dead;
and he knelt on immovable. They brought him his eldest child, Ellinor,
in utter despair what to do in order to rouse him. They had no thought
as to the effect on her, hitherto shut up in the nursery during this busy
day of confusion and alarm. The child had no idea of death, and her
father, kneeling and tearless, was far less an object of surprise or
interest to her than her mother, lying still and white, and not turning
her head to smile at her darling.
    "Mamma! mamma!" cried the child, in shapeless terror. But the mother
never stirred; and the father hid his face yet deeper in the bedclothes,
to stifle a cry as if a sharp knife had pierced his heart. The child
forced her impetuous way from her attendants, and rushed to the bed.
Undeterred by deadly cold or stony immobility, she kissed the lips and
stroked the glossy raven hair, murmuring sweet words of wild love, such
as had passed between the mother and child often and often when no
witnesses were by; and altogether seemed so nearly beside herself in an
agony of love and terror, that Edward arose, and softly taking her in his
arms, bore her away, lying back like one dead (so exhausted was she by
the terrible emotion they had forced on her childish heart), into his
study, a little room opening out of the grand library, where on happy
evenings, never to come again, he and his wife were wont to retire to
have coffee together, and then perhaps stroll out of the glass-door into
the open air, the shrubbery, the fields—never more to be trodden by
those dear feet. What passed between father and child in this seclusion
none could tell. Late in the evening Ellinor's supper was sent for, and
the servant who brought it in saw the child lying as one dead in her
father's arms, and before he left the room watched his master feeding
her, the girl of six years of age, with as tender care as if she had been
a baby of six months.

Chapter III
*
    From that time the tie between father and daughter grew very strong and
tender indeed. Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection between her
baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for babies, had only a
theoretic regard for his younger child, while the elder absorbed all his
love. Every day that he dined at home Ellinor was placed opposite to him
while he ate his late dinner; she sat where her mother had done during
the meal, although she had dined and even supped some time before on the
more primitive nursery fare. It was half pitiful, half amusing, to see
the little girl's grave, thoughtful ways and modes of speech, as if
trying to act up to the dignity of her place as her father's companion,
till sometimes the little head nodded off to slumber in the middle of
lisping some wise little speech. "Old-fashioned," the nurses called her,
and prophesied that she would not live long in consequence of her old-
fashionedness. But instead of the fulfilment of this prophecy, the fat
bright baby was seized with fits, and was well, ill, and dead in a day!
Ellinor's grief was something alarming, from its quietness and
concealment. She waited till she was left—as she thought—alone at
nights, and then sobbed and cried her passionate cry for "Baby, baby,
come back to me—come back;" till every one feared for the health of the
frail little girl whose childish affections had had to stand two such
shocks. Her father put aside all business, all pleasure of every kind,
to win his darling from her grief. No mother could have done more, no
tenderest nurse done half so much as Mr. Wilkins then did for Ellinor.
    If it had not been for him she would have just died of her grief. As it
was, she overcame it—but slowly, wearily—hardly letting herself love
anyone for some time, as if she instinctively feared lest all her strong
attachments should find a sudden end in death. Her