When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
SHAKESPEARE.
Two nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now
the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How
Rachel had lived through them she knew not. The twenty-ninth had been
the appointed day. Both women had endured till then, feeling that that
day would make an end. Neither had contemplated the possibility of
hearing nothing for two days more. Long afterwards, in quiet years,
Rachel tried to recall those two days and nights. But memory only gave
lurid glimpses, as of lightning across darkness. In one of those
glimpses she recalled that Lady Newhaven had become ill, that the doctor
had been sent for, that she had been stupefied with narcotics. In
another she was walking in the desolate frost-nipped gardens, and the
two boys were running towards her across the grass.
As the sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her
sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven, after making the whole day
frightful, was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the
distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and
woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looking out, seeing
nothing, but still gazing blindly out hour after hour?
Perhaps the quiet mother earth watches us, and whispers to our deaf
ears:
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
Little pulse of life writhing in your shirt of fire, the shirt is but of
clay of your mother's weaving, and she will take it from you presently
when you lay back your head on her breast.
There had been wind all day, a high, dreadful wind, which had
accompanied all the nightmare of the day as a wail accompanies pain. But
now it had dropped with the sun, who was setting with little pageant
across the level land. The whole sky, from north to south, from east to
west, was covered with a wind-threshed floor of thin wan clouds, and
shreds of clouds, through which, as through a veil, the steadfast face
of the heaven beyond looked down.
And suddenly, from east to west, from north to south, as far as the
trees and wolds in the dim, forgotten east, the exhausted livid clouds
blushed wave on wave, league on league, red as the heart of a rose. The
wind-whipped earth was still. The trees held their breath. Very black
against the glow the carved cross on the adjoining gable stood out. And
in another moment the mighty tide of color went as it had come, swiftly
ebbing across its infinite shores of sky. And the waiting night came
down suddenly.
"Oh, my God!" said Rachel, stretching out her hands to ward off the
darkness. "Not another night. I cannot bear another night."
A slow step came along the gravel; it passed below the window and
stopped at the door. Some one knocked. Rachel tore open the throat of
her gown. She was suffocating. Her long-drawn breathing seemed to deaden
all other sounds. Nevertheless she heard it--the faint footfall of some
one in the hall, a distant opening and shutting of doors. A vague,
indescribable tremor seemed to run through the house.
She stole out of her room and down the passage. At Lady Newhaven's door
her French maid was hesitating, her hand on the handle.
Below, on the stairs, stood a clergyman and the butler.
"I am the bearer of sad tidings," said the clergyman. Rachel recognized
him as the Archdeacon at whom Lord Newhaven had so often laughed.
"Perhaps you would prepare Lady Newhaven before I break them to her."
The door was suddenly opened, and Lady Newhaven stood in the doorway.
One small clinched hand held together the long white dressing-gown,
which she had hastily flung round her, while the other was outstretched
against the door-post. She swayed as she stood. Morphia and terror
burned in her glassy eyes fixed in agony upon the clergyman. The light
in the hall below struck upward at her colorless face. In later days
this was the picture which Lady Newhaven recalled to mind as the most
striking of the whole series.
"Tell her," said Rachel, sharply.
The Archdeacon advanced.
"Prepare yourself, dear Lady Newhaven," he said, sonorously. "Our dear
friend, Lord Newhaven, has met with a serious accident. Er--the Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
"Is he dead?" whispered Lady Newhaven.
The Archdeacon bowed his head.
Every one except the children heard the scream which rang through the
house.
Rachel put her arms round the tottering, distraught figure, drew it
gently back into the room, and closed the door behind her.