Monica would not be bustled. She was a strange figure now in the stuffy little house. Her manner of speech, her clothes, her demeanour were all at odds with it. Nurse Gourlay did not dare to bully her; Nurse Heffernan, who had a feudal streak in her, accepted Monica as the mistress, to be heeded right or wrong. Monica took on the night nursing.

“Monny, are you there?”

“Yes, Ma, right here.”

“Monny, you won’t let ‘em take me to that place?”

“No, Ma; don’t worry.”

“I’ve been there. I was there this afternoon. But I run away. I run away in my night-gown. A couple o’ fellas in the hall seen me, and they tried to grab me. Was it bad?—Monny, was it bad?”

“Was what bad, Ma?”

“Was it bad they seen me in only my night-gown?”

“No, no; not bad. It was only a dream.”

“It wasn’t a dream. I was there. Monny, when they get you in there they make you do awful things. It’s a bad-house. There was girls there I used to know. Kate Dempster was there, flirtin’ her tail just like she used when we was girls. Kate’s a bad girl. Am I a bad girl, Monny?”

“No, Ma, you’re a good girl.”

“Are you a good girl, Monny?”

“Yes, Ma, I’m a good girl.”

“Then why do you talk so funny? You’re talkin’ all the time waw-waw-waw so I can’t make you out. You ain’t Monny!”

“Yes, yes dear, I’m Monny. You mustn’t upset yourself. I’m Monny and I’m right here.”

“No you ain’t. Monny don’t talk like that. You’ve sent Monny away! And I’m a bad girl, and they’ll put me in the bad-house!”

“Quiet, dear. Let me give you a sip of this. Just a sip.”

“I’m a bad girl.—Monny, will I die?”

“No, dear, of course not. You had a very good day today.”

But it was not a good day. It was what Dr Cobbett called “a remission”.

The period of remission lasted for seven days. To the nurses the vomiting, the bloating, the wasting away of flesh, the groaning and the recurrence of pain were the accustomed circumstances of serious illness. To Alfred Gall, who had never seen his wife in such straits, it was an agony for which he could find no expression. Morning and night he would go to the door of her room, look at the inert form in the bed and listen to its heavy breathing, after which he would creep away, his face marked with fear and loss. Only his sister Ellen had power to raise any hope in him. Alice was impatient of his spiritlessness; it was her temperament to talk about troubles, and to find relief in talk; she had no understanding of her father’s stricken silence. Monica was gentle with him, but her energies were saved for the long vigils at her mother’s bed-side.

Not all of their talks in the night were coloured by Mrs Gall’s semi-delirium. True, most of what was said was in the pattern of fear and delusion, countered by love and reassurance. But for Monica her mother’s rational spells were more exhausting than her wanderings, for in them it was emphasized and re-emphasized that to her mother she was now in part a stranger. Her manner of speech had changed, and Mrs Gall could not be comforted easily in the new, clear, warm speech which Monica had been at such pains to learn; but she could not undo it, could not go back to the speech of her home, for the new speech had become the instrument of the best that was in her mind, and heart. It seemed to her cruel and shameful that it should be so, but she was forced to admit the fact; it was so. To speak as Ma wanted her to speak was not only difficult, but it was a betrayal of Revelstoke, of Domdaniel, of Molloy and all the poets and musicians who stood behind them in time. Did she love these things more than her own mother? She put the question to herself, in those words, many times, but never dared to give either of the possible answers. Loyalty demanded that she give love, and she gave it as fully as she was able.

Loyalty demanded truth. But Mrs Gall, fearing death, returned again and again to incidents in her own life, at which she could only bring herself to hint, though in delirium their nature was revealed a little more clearly. She was convinced that she had sinned unforgivably, and that her sins were sexual in their nature. She named no names, spoke of no incidents; perhaps there had been none. But during her lifetime the only morality to which she had ever given a moment of serious thought, or to which she had ever paid solemn tribute, was a morality of sexual prohibition; she felt now that she had not been true to it, yet she could not confess her transgression or give clear expression to her remorse. Instead, she accused herself vaguely, and suffered in the tormented images of her morphia dreams.

She was specific in her demands and exhortations to Monica, however. Was Monica a good girl? The question came again and again when she was partly conscious, and thus phrased, from Mrs Gall, it could have only one meaning. Monica had no intention of saying that, in her mother’s terms, she was not a good girl. But she had to meet the question in her own mind. Was she? To say yes was disloyal to home, to the woman who was in such distress at her side. But there were seven of these weary nights, and before the last Monica was sure of her answer. She was a good girl. Chastity is to have the body in the soul’s keeping; Domdaniel had said it, and everything in her own experience supported it. And this decision, more than anything else, divided Monica from her mother when her mother most needed her. Her mother’s idea of good and bad would not do for her.

If these ideas were invalid for her, what else that was valid had her mother to give her? Nothing, thought Monica; not with any sense of freedom, of breaking a lifelong bondage, but sadly and with pity for her mother and herself. But on the sixth night, after a brief period of sleep, Mrs Gall opened her eyes, and looked at her daughter more clearly than she had done since her homecoming.

“I been asleep.”

“Yes, Ma. Do you feel a little rested?”

“Was I talkin’ foolish a while ago?”

“The hypodermics make you dream, dear.”

“And I guess I go on pretty wild, eh?”

Monica was about to deny it, but she looked into her mother’s eye, and saw a twinkle there. Mrs Gall laughed, feebly but unmistakably.

“Yes, you were pretty wild, Ma.”

“You bet I was. I’ve got quite an imagination. That’s where you’re like me, Monny. Always remember that. You got that from me.”

Tears came into Monica’s eyes; they were tears of happiness, for at last she shared something with her mother. She wept, and laughed a little, as she said—

“Yes Ma, I got that from you. We’re very alike, aren’t we?”

“Yes, I guess we are.”

The period of remission ended, unmistakably, a few hours later, on the morning of the seventh day, and Dr Cobbett said that peritonitis, which would certainly be fatal, had come, as he had expected it would under the circumstances. The family last saw Mrs Gall, leaden grey, with eyes partly closed and seemingly already dead, though the doctor called it “shock”. She died at four o’clock the following morning. Only Monica was with her then.