"I'm looking for Margaret," the faint voice said.

"You'd better try to sleep; you'll be stronger if you sleep a little."

But for answer there was only a little moaning whisper that Margaret's heart told her was her own name, and in agony she rocked to and fro and clung to her mother's skirt hung against the wall, and kissed it, and the tears came into her eyes and scalded them.

"I will go and get you a cup of arrow-root," she heard Hannah say; "it is past midnight, and time that you had nourishment." She pushed back the chair on which she had been sitting and came out of the room and, pa.s.sing the door of the cupboard in which her sister was hiding, went down-stairs. Then Margaret slipped softly into her mother's room and knelt by the bedside.

"Mother!--mother!" she whispered, and put her face down on the thin hands and covered them with kisses. "Mother, darling, I am here--beside you."

A look of fright and joy came into Mrs. Vincent's dulling eyes.

"Margaret?" she gasped. "Thank G.o.d, I've seen you! Hannah won't believe that I am dying. Did Towsey--"

"Yes, darling, yes," Margaret whispered; "and I love you so--I love you so. Get well, darling; father is coming back--he is coming back immediately; get well for him," she whispered between the kisses she rained on the thin face and the hands that had a strange chill on them.

"I shall never see him," Mrs. Vincent said; "but tell him that I thought of him and of you all the time."

"Oh, mother--mother--"

"Bless you, dear, bless you," Mrs. Vincent said. A happy smile came for a moment over her face, though fear quenched it. "If Hannah finds you she will drive you out. You must go--I couldn't bear it, dear. I entreat you to go."

"I will hide, darling; Towsey will manage everything," Margaret said.

"Hannah is very hard," the dying woman whispered, anxiously; "but she doesn't mean it--and she's been very good to me--it's only because she's strict. Tell your father he will come to me, and I'll be waiting. Go, dear--go--I couldn't have died without seeing you." With a last effort Mrs. Vincent kissed her again, but her lips would hardly move, though a cry of fear came through them, for Hannah had quickly crossed the hall below and begun to ascend the stairs; and Margaret knew that if she left the room she would meet her on the threshold. Mrs. Vincent's eyes turned in terror towards the door and remained fixed; a strange expression came to them, as if she saw many waiting and was satisfied, knowing why they had come.

In a moment Margaret was on the other side of the bed and had hidden behind the screen that was partly round the top and down one side of it.

She could not stand for trembling; she crouched down on her knees and held her breath.

"Mother, I thought I heard you cry," Hannah said as she entered, but there came no sound for answer. "Mother," she said again, and waited; but all was still. Then Hannah went to the door and called: "Towsey, Towsey, come here!" and Towsey, startled by her tone, came running in haste, and Margaret knew that they were standing together at the bedside. The moments went by with a strange stillness, dragging and terrible, as though an unseen host held on to them. She heard Towsey whisper, "She is going"; she heard her mother's quick breathing, she heard her try to speak, but the words were only half articulated, and still she did not dare to move.

Hannah said: "Mother, mother, Christ will save you; pray to Him," and her mother whispered once more:

"Tell father and Margaret--and there will be James, too." Then the breathing grew quicker, and the death-rattle came in her throat, and Margaret put her hands to her own throat and covered her mouth, and crouched lower and lower towards the floor, so that she might not cry out in her agony. Then all was still, and she knew that her mother had died.

"She is better off; G.o.d be merciful to her, a sinner," Hannah said, and sat down in the arm-chair at the bedside. It seemed to Margaret as if hours went by while she cowered and rocked in her hiding-place, hoping that presently the dead would be left alone for a little, and that then she might creep out and see her mother's face once more.

But this was not to be, for when Hannah rose she called down the staircase: "Towsey, you can come; we must make her ready." Then she came back into the room, and it seemed as if some spirit had whispered to her, for she walked round the bed and moved the screen behind which Margaret was hidden. She started back almost in horror when she saw the crouching figure.

"Margaret! is it you that have dared?"

Margaret stood up and faced her, and even Hannah saw that the young face was drawn with misery, and that her lips trembled.

"It is you that dared not to send for me," she said, in an agonized voice.

Hannah turned to the bed and drew the sheet over their mother's face.

"I wrote to you this afternoon, telling you that she was ill, though you had no right to be here." So the sisters had both written, and neither letter had reached its destination in time.

"But she was my mother, and called for me," Margaret answered. "It was my right as well as yours to be by her."

"You gave up your right," Hannah said, doggedly, "and the place is mine." But she took care not to look at Margaret, and her hands were twitching.

Then Towsey came forward. "For shame, Hannah!" she said; "this is your mother's child you're speaking to, and in the presence of the dead. You can't mean that she's not to stay here."

"Oh, you can't mean that I am not to stay while she is here?" Margaret said, pa.s.sionately, looking towards the bed. "I think that the agony I have borne this last hour will set me free of h.e.l.l, if it is true. You can think, if you like, that G.o.d has sent it me for punishment, but we needn't speak of these things," she pleaded; "I only want to stay in peace till she has gone forever."

"And it's peace that G.o.d gives," said Towsey, "to them that have suffered."

"You can stay," Hannah said. "It's true that she was the mother of us both, and I'd rather you had been beside her when she died than hidden there." She turned her head away quickly. "It's that I can't forgive,"

she added, with a break in her voice.

"Hannah," said Margaret, and went a step forward, for Hannah's voice even more than her words overcame her--"Hannah, I was afraid you wouldn't let me in; you said I shouldn't enter the door."

"She wasn't dying then," said Hannah, with grim sadness, "and I didn't think it would be yet; besides, one often says things--I even said them to her; but I wouldn't have had this happen for all I could see."

Margaret put her hand on Hannah's arm, but Hannah stood quite rigid and stern, with her face turned towards the still form that was hidden from them.

x.x.xII

The dawn came soon in those late August days, but it seemed as if the darkness would never be at an end that night. Margaret sat in the living-room in the big chair by the fireplace; it faced the one that had been her mother's, and she looked at the arm on which she had perched herself so often in the happy morning talks of old--the mornings that were all at an end for ever and ever. She had set the door wide open and the sweet air came in, chilly, and with a strange sense of what had happened.

Towsey found her presently. "We wondered where you'd got to," she said.

"I went to the garden, and through the field--I wanted to think for a little while."

"I made the bed in your room ready, but I suppose when you looked in it was still covered up, and you didn't feel like staying there."

"I don't like staying anywhere," Margaret answered, with the restlessness that cannot find expression keen upon her.

"You had better come into the kitchen--there's a cup of hot milk ready; you must want something. Hannah's just gone to lie down; she's been anxious and wondering what had become of you; but she thought you had gone to the wood, and it was no good looking for you."

They sat down in the kitchen opposite each other by the table, the old woman, whose eyes were swollen with weeping, and the girl with the scared, white face, who had just seen death for the first time.

"I am thinking of my father," she said to Towsey; "he doesn't know yet--probably he's grieving for Uncle Cyril, but looking forward to coming back to mother. It is so dreadful to think that he'll never see her more."

"Life's a queer thing," Towsey answered, "and difficult to make the best of, and worse when one's old, for then one knows; but when one's young one hopes."

"There's nothing left to hope for."

"There is for you, Miss Margaret. When any one's first gone one feels adrift, and doesn't see the good of living one's self, but when one's young others come along after a bit. Just you go and lie down, poor lamb; you look worn enough."

"Is Hannah asleep?"

"Maybe--she's in her room. She's been pretty bad, but she doesn't like any one to see."

Margaret put down the milk she could not finish. "I'll go up-stairs,"