There could be no waiting for George G.o.dolphin: the spirit might be on its wing. They gathered in the room, Grace, Margery, and Viscount Averil: and, the stillness broken only by the hushed sobs of Grace, Mr.

Hastings administered the last rite of our religion to his dying child.

CHAPTER VII.

AT REST.

Breathe softly, tread gently, for it is the chamber of the dying! The spirit is indeed on its wing, hovering on the very isthmus which separates time from eternity.

A small shaded lamp throws its subdued light upon the room, blending with the ruddier hue cast by the fire. The white, wan face of Maria G.o.dolphin lies quietly on the not whiter pillow; her breath comes in short gasps, and may be heard at a distance; otherwise she is calm and still; the sweet soft eyes are open yet, and the world and its interests, so far as cognizance goes, has not closed. Meta, in her black frock, dressed as she had been in the day, is lying on the bed by her mother's side: one weak arm is thrown round the child, as if she could not part with her greatest earthly treasure; and George is sitting in a chair on the other side the bed, his elbow on the pillow, his face turned to catch every shade that may appear on that fading one, so soon to be lost to him for ever.

The silence was interrupted by the striking of the house-clock: twelve: and its strokes came through the doors of the room with preternatural loudness in the hushed stillness of midnight. Margery glided in. Margery and Jean were keeping watch over the fire in the next room, the sitting-room, ready for any services required of them: and they knew that services for the dead as well as for the living might be wanted that night.

The doctors had paid a last visit, superfluous as they knew it to be.

Dr. Beale had come with the departure of his dinner guests; Mr. Snow earlier in the evening: she was dying, they said, calmly and peacefully: and those friends who had wished to take their farewell had taken it ere they left the house, leaving her, as she wished, alone with her husband.

Margery came in with a noiseless step. If Margery had come in once upon the same errand which brought her now, she had come in ten times. Maria turned her eyes towards her.

"She would be a sight better in bed. It has gone midnight. It can't do any good, her lying there."

Meta partly stirred her golden curls as she moved nearer to her mother, and Maria's feeble hand tightened its clasp on the little one. George nodded; and Margery went back rather in dudgeon, and gave the fire in the next room a fierce poke.

"It's not _well_ to let her see a mortal die. Just you hold your tongue, Jean, about mother and child! Don't I know it's parting them as well as you?--but the parting _must_ come, and before another hour is over; and I say it would be better to bring her away now. Master has no more sense than a calf, or he'd send her. Not he! He just gave me one of his looks, as much as to say, 'You be off again; she isn't coming.'"

"How does she seem now?" asked Jean, a tall woman, with a thin, straight figure, and an old-fashioned, large white cap.

"I saw no change. There won't be any till the minute comes."

On the table was a tray of cups and saucers. Margery went up to them and drew two from the rest. "We may as well have a drop o' tea now," she said, taking up a small black tea-pot that was standing on the hob--for the grate was old-fashioned. "Shall I cut you a bit of bread and b.u.t.ter, Jean?"

"No, thank you. I couldn't eat it."

They sat on either side the table, the tea-cups between them. Margery put the tea-pot back on the hob. Jean stirred her tea noiselessly.

"I have known those, as far gone as she, rally for hours," Jean remarked, in a half-whisper.

Margery shook her head. "_She_ won't rally. It will be only the working out of my dream. I dreamt last night----"

"Don't get talking of dreams now, Margery," interrupted Jean, with a shiver. "I never like to bring dreams up when the dead are about."

Margery cast a resentful glance at her. "Jean, woman, if you have laughed at my dreams once you have laughed at them a hundred times when we lived together at Ashlydyat, ridiculing and saying you never could believe in such things. You know you have."

"No more I don't believe in 'em," said Jane, taking little sips of her hot tea. "But it's not a pleasant subject for to-night. The child is to come to the old home, they say, to be brought up by my lady."

Margery grunted.

"Shall we have you at Ashlydyat again, Margery?"

"Now don't you bother your head about me, Jean, woman. Is it a time to cast one's thoughts about and lay out plans? Let the future take care of itself."

Jean remained silent after this rebuff and attended to her tea, which she could not get sufficiently cool to drink comfortably. She had been an inferior servant to Margery at Ashlydyat, in a measure under her control; and she still deferred to her in manner. Presently she began again.

"It's a curious complaint that your mistress has died of, Margery.

Leastways it has a curious name. I made bold to ask Dr. Beale to-night what it was, when I went to open the gate for him, and he called it--what was it?--atrophy. Atrophy: that was it. They could not at all cla.s.s the disease of which Mrs. George G.o.dolphin had died, he said, and were content to call it atrophy for want of a better name. I took leave to say that I didn't understand the word, and he explained that it meant a gradual wasting away of the system without apparent cause."

Margery did not reply for the moment: she was swelling with displeasure.

"Margery, what _is_ atrophy, for I don't understand it a bit?"

"It's rubbish," flashed Margery--"as applied to my poor dear mistress.

She has died of the trouble--that she couldn't speak of--that has eaten into her heart and cankered there--and broke it at the last. Atrophy!

but those doctors must put a name to everything. Jean, woman, I have been with her all through it, and I tell you that it's the _trouble_ that has killed her. She has had it on all sides, has felt it in more ways than the world gives her credit for. She never opened her lips to me about a thing--and perhaps it had been better if she had--but I have my eyes in my head, and I could see what it was doing for her. As I lay down in my clothes on this very sofa last night, for it wasn't up to my bed I went, with her so ill, I couldn't help thinking to myself, that if she could but have broken the ice and talked of her sorrows they might have worn off in time. It is burying the grief within people's own b.r.e.a.s.t.s that kills them."

Jean was silent. Margery began turning the grounds in her empty tea-cup round and round, staring dreamily at the forms they a.s.sumed.

"Hark!" cried Jean.

A sound was heard in the next room. Margery started from her chair and softly opened the door. But it was only her master, who had gone round the bed and was leaning over Meta. Margery closed the door again.

George had come to the conclusion that the child would be best in bed.

Meta was lying perfectly still, looking earnestly at her mamma's face, so soon, so soon to be lost to her. He drew the hair from her brow as he spoke.

"You will be very tired, Meta. I think you must go to bed."

For answer Meta broke into a pa.s.sionate storm of sobs. They roused Maria from her pa.s.sive silence.

"Meta--darling," came forth the isolated words in the difficulty of her laboured breath--"I am going away, but you will come to me. You will be sure to come to me, for G.o.d has promised. I seem to have had the promise given to me, to hold it, now, and I shall carry it away with me. I am going to heaven. When the blind was drawn up yesterday morning and I saw the snow, it made me shiver, but I said there will be no snow in heaven.

Meta, there will be only spring there; no sultry heat of summer, no keen winter's cold. Oh, my child! try to come to me, try always! I shall keep a place for you."

The minutes went on: the spirit fleeting, George watching with his aching heart. Soon she spoke again.

"Has it struck twelve?"

"Ten minutes ago."

"Then it is my birthday. I am twenty-eight to-day. It is young to die!"

Young to die! Yes, it was young to die: but there are some who can count time by sorrow, not by years.

"Don't grieve, George. It will pa.s.s so very soon, and you will come to me. Clad in our white robes, we shall rise at the Last Day to eternal life, and be together for ever and for ever."

The tears were dropping from his eyes. The grief of the present, the anguish of the parting, the remorse for the irrevocable past, in which he might have cherished her more tenderly had he foreseen this, and did not, were all too present to him. He laid his face on hers with a bitter cry.

"Forgive me before you go! Oh, my darling, forgive me all!"