The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
“No, no; they are both alive, thank God! But, my dear, they are both together. Not
above half an hour after you left your mother stirred and began callin' again for her
husband; and all of a sudden I heard somebody fumbling at the door, and in walked
your father. Eh, Simon, I thought 'twas his ghost, he looked so tall and awful wi’ his
white face and his fixed eyes! He came stumblin' an' staggerin' across the room, and
stooped over the bed. ‘I've come, sweetheart,' said he. ‘I know you can't rest — I've
come to sing to you. I'll
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sing in a minute or two,’ says he, ‘when I get my breath'. He made a shift to lift her in
his arms, but he was too weak, ye know, and he fell all of a heap across the bed wi’s
head on her pillow. And there he is still, for none of us dare shift him. Susan and me
just managed to get him up on the bed altogether, and we covered him wi' blankets and
that, but eh dear! I doubt he'll get his death. I can never forgive Susan — her eyes were
that heavy, she says, she dropped off as she was sittin’ by the bed and never heard him
stir.”
As soon as Simon had taken in the drift of this voluble explanation he pushed past his
aunt, and hastened upstairs. There, indeed, they lay side by side, his father's noble head
bent close to the little white-capped one which had so long moved restlessly on its
solitary pillow.
One great feeble arm was thrown across her, the large languid hand endeavouring, it
would seem, to press her closer to the broad heaving breast. Richmond pushed past
Simon and laid a finger on the yeoman's wrist; then he shook his head.
"Can you do nothing?" asked Simon sharply. "Shall we carry him to his own room?"
"Nay, nay, leave him in peace. Nothing can hurt him now."
"Do you mean to say," cried the young man, almost fiercely, "that he is going?"
"Bear up, my poor lad," said the apothecary, "they are both — nearly gone."
Not quite, though; for Mrs. Fleetwood at that moment raised her head, and, with an
evident effort, moved on the pillow so as to lean it on the shoulder where it had so often
found rest The action roused her husband from his semi-unconscious state; he lifted his