CHAPTER XXIV. DOWN THE RIVER

Tom did not get up in the afternoon. However, he came in the evening, and the next morning, and the next.

Margaretta and Roger, Bonny, Selina, and Mr. Jimson also came. Grandma was decidedly better, and in their joy they came even oftener than they had in their sorrow at her illness.

Berty could hardly contain herself for very lightness and extravagance of spirit. It had seemed to her that she could not endure the mere thought of a further and long-continued illness on the part of her beloved grandmother. To think of that other contingency—her possible death—sent her into fits of shuddering and despondency in which it seemed as if she, too, would die if her grandmother did.

Now all was changed. Day by day the exquisite[271] sunshine continued, the air was balmy, there was a yellow haze about the sun. It seemed to Berty that she was living in an enchanted world. Grandma was going about the house with a firm step—a bright eye. She had gone over all her trunks and closets. She had sorted letters, tidied her boxes of clothes, and arranged all her belongings with a neatness and expedition that seemed to betoken the energy of returned youthfulness.

She was also knitting again. Nothing had pleased Berty as much as this. Tears of delight fell on the silk stocking as she handed it to Grandma the first time she asked her for it.

“Dear Grandma,” said Berty, on this afternoon, abruptly dropping on a foot-stool beside her, and putting her head on her knee, “dear Grandma.”

Mrs. Travers, still steadily knitting, glanced at her as if to say, “Why this sudden access of affection?”

“It doesn’t mean anything in particular,” said Berty, pressing still closer, “only that you are so dear.”

Grandma smiled, and went on with her work.

“You are just toeing that stocking off,” said Berty.

“Yes, dear,” replied her grandmother. “This is[272] the last of the six pairs for Mrs. Darley-James. You will remember, Berty, they are all for her.”

“Why should I remember?” asked the girl, anxiously. “You always remember for yourself.”

“True,” said Mrs. Travers, composedly, and, getting up, she went to her writing-desk. Taking out a roll of exquisitely made stockings, she wrapped them in a piece of paper, and with a firm hand wrote, “Mrs. Darley-James, from her old friend, Margaret Travers.”

Having directed the parcel, she left her desk and went to the veranda.

Berty followed her. Grandma was looking strangely up and down the river—strangely and restlessly. At last she said, “It’s a glorious afternoon. I should like to go out in a boat.”

“But, Grandma,” said Berty, uneasily, “do you feel able for it?”

Her grandmother looked at her, and the brightness of her face silenced the girl’s scruples.

“I will take you in my boat, dear,” she said, gently, “if you wish to go.”

“I should like to have Margaretta come,” said Mrs. Travers.

“Very well, we will send for her.”

“And Roger,” said Grandma.

[273]

“Roger is at an important business meeting this afternoon, I happen to know,” said Berty, hesitatingly.

“He would leave it for me,” said Grandma.

“Do you wish me to ask him?” inquired Berty, in some anxiety.

“Yes,” said Grandma, softly.

Berty got up and was about to leave the veranda, when Mrs. Travers went on. “Will you send for Bonny, too?”

“Oh, Grandma, don’t you feel well?” asked Berty, in increasing anxiety.

“Just at present I do, dear,” and her voice was so clear, her manner so calm, that Berty was reassured until her next remark.

“Berty, where is Tom this afternoon?”

“Oh, Grandma, he was going to Bangor on business. He is just about getting to the station now.”

“Will you send for him, too?”

“Send for him?” faltered Berty. “Oh, Grandma, you are ill. You must be ill.”

“Do I look ill?”

“Oh, no, no,” said Berty, in despair. “You don’t look ill, your face is like an angel’s, but you frighten me.”

[274]

“My child,” said Grandma, “I never felt better in my life; but despatch your messengers.”

Berty left the room. She had a strange sensation as if walking on air. “Bring your boat, Roger,” she wrote, “your family boat. Mine isn’t large enough.”

Her messengers were faithful, and in an hour Margaretta, Bonny, Roger, and Tom were hastening to the house.

Berty met them in the hall. “No, Grandma isn’t ill,” she said, with a half-sob. “Don’t stare at her, and don’t frighten her. She just took a fancy to go out boating, and to have you all with her.”

“But it is so unlike Grandma to interfere or to disarrange plans,” murmured Margaretta; “there is something wrong.” However, she said nothing aloud, and went quietly into the parlour with the others and spoke to Grandma, who looked at them all with a strange brightness in her eyes, but said little.

Tom could not get the fright from his manner. Old Mrs. Travers would not interrupt a railway journey for a trifle. They might say what they liked.

In somewhat breathless and foreboding silence[275] they got into Roger’s big boat moored at the landing, and he and Tom took the oars.

Once out upon the bosom of the calmly flowing river, their faces brightened. Sky and water were resplendent, and they were softly enveloped in the golden haze of approaching sunset.

Here where the river was broadest the shores seemed dim in the yellow light. With the dying glory of the sun behind them, they went down the stream in the direction of Grandma’s pointing hand.

How well she looked, propped up on her cushions in the stern. Her eyes were shining with a new light, her very skin seemed transparent and luminous. Was it possible that, instead of failing and entering upon a weary old age, this new-found energy betokened a renewed lease of life? Their faces brightened still further. Tom at last lost the fright from his eyes, and Berty’s vanished colour began to come fitfully back.

As they sat enfolding her in loving glances, Grandma occasionally spoke in low, short sentences, mostly relating to the river.

“I was born by it—it has been a friend to me. Children, you will all live by the river.”

Upon arriving opposite Bobbetty’s Island, Grandma smiled. Berty’s tramp, Mafferty, in a decent[276] suit of clothes, stood on a rock, surrounded by a number of handsome, dignified cats, who sat or stood beside him like so many dogs. As they passed he waved them a respectful greeting with one of Tom’s discarded hats.

“You will not give him up,” said Grandma to Tom. “You will not become discouraged.”

“I will not,” he said, solemnly.