He said, “My poor girl, you have read us right. I am anxious about Christopher, and all the servants know it.”
“Anxious, and not tell ME; his wife; the woman whose life is bound up in his.”
“Was it for us to retard your convalescence, and set you fretting, and perhaps destroy your child? Rosa, my darling, think what a treasure Heaven has sent you, to love and care for.”
“Yes,” said she, trembling, “Heaven has been good to me; I hope Heaven will always be as good to me. I don't deserve it; but then I tell God so. I am very grateful, and very penitent. I never forget that, if I had been a good wife, my husband--five weeks is a long time. Why do you tremble so? Why are you so pale--a strong man like you? CALAMITY! CALAMITY!”
She looked at him, started wildly up, then sank back into her chair. So the stricken deer leaps, then falls. Yet even now she put on a deceitful calm, and said, “Tell me the truth. I have a right to know.”
He stammered out, “There is a report of an accident at sea.”
“Of a passenger drowned--out of that ship. This, coupled with his silence, fills our hearts with fear.”
“It is worse--you are breaking it to me--you have gone too far to stop. One word: is he alive? Oh, say he is alive!”
Philip rang the bell hard, and said in a troubled voice, “Rosa, think of your child.”
“Not when my husband--Is he alive or dead?”
“It is hard to say, with such a terrible report about, and no letters,” faltered the old man, his courage failing him.
“What are you afraid of? Do you think I can't die, and go to him? Alive, or dead?” and she stood before him, raging and quivering in every limb.
“Fetch her child,” he cried; “God have mercy on her.”
“Ah, then he is dead,” said she, with stony calmness. “I drove him to sea, and he is dead.”
The nurse rushed in, and held the child to her.
“Yes, our poor Christie is gone--but his child is here--the image of him. Do not forget the mother. Have pity on his child and yours.”
“Take it out of my sight!” she screamed. “Away with it, or I shall murder it, as I have murdered its father. My dear Christie, before all that live! I have killed him. I shall die for him. I shall go to him.” She raved and tore her hair. Servants rushed in. Rosa was carried to her bed, screaming and raving, and her black hair all down on both sides, a piteous sight.