And now Sophy descended into the darkness of darkness where death and
remorse sit brooding together--that vasty cavern of uttermost black
gloom which underlies the Valley of the Shadow. Faith does not walk
there nor hope. There a thousand years seem not as a day, but a day
seems as a thousand years.
As she watched beside her son, she felt a more rending anguish than when
she had given him birth, for now her soul was in travail of him. She who
had given him life might now have given him death. If he died it would
be she who had killed him. "Happiness hunter ... happiness hunter...."
her own phrase rang in her mind.
And this was what her son had come to, while she was absorbed in hunting
happiness....
She would not leave him now even long enough to change her clothes.
Nurse Fleming brought her some fresh linen and a dressing-gown to the
bedside, and put them on her as if she had been a child. She submitted
quietly. The nurse unbound her hair, brushed and plaited it, then made
her take an easy chair that she rolled up.
When Bellamy entered again Sophy roused from her tranced watching long
enough to ask him to get Anne Harding if it were possible. He went at
once to do so.
There was no night or day to Sophy now. The grim, candle-lit hours went
by monotonous as a linked chain paid out of darkness into darkness by
invisible hands.
Then came intervals of horror--struggles for breath. Wild shadows on the
ceiling as nurse and doctor fought together with that other Shadow.
Anne Harding came. Sophy stared at her blindly, and said: "I thought
you'd come, Cecil...."
Then after many days, each as a thousand years, a voice came through the
smothering blackness in her mind. It said:
"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."
The blackness closed in again.
She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an
old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.
She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...."
Then everything weltered in on her at once--waves, wreckage, as of a
world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne
Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very
light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.
"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.
Anne Harding put her finger to her lips--glanced towards a smooth white
bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...."
whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very
ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."
They helped her to a chair beside the bed--Cecil's old leather armchair.
Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering
at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling
to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.
They all three sat in silence watching the sleeping child.
Sophy whispered once, with her avid eyes on the little, sunken face:
"Is he really only ... asleep?"
For answer, Bellamy lifted one of Bobby's hands and laid it in hers.
"He's so sound it won't wake him," he reassured her, smiling.
And for Sophy the warmth of that little hand was as the warmth of her
own soul's blood.
* * * * *
For a long, long time she sat there with inner vision fixed on the
beautiful and terrible star that had risen in the dark night of her
soul--the star of a destiny as stern and far more ancient than that
foretold at Bethlehem: the star of primordial and eternally recurrent
sacrifice ... of the crucifixion of the mother for the child. And a
woman if she be so lifted up shall draw all women to her and to each
other--for this is the dark yet shining law, whereby the individual's
loss is the gain of the whole race.
When Bobby at last opened his eyes they rested on his mother's face. She
hardly dared to breathe, it was so wonderful to see those grey eyes
looking into hers with recognition. And the boy, too, was afraid to stir
or speak lest his mother's face should vanish or change into some
dreadful difference as it had vanished and changed in the dreams of
fever. But as she knelt, holding his hand against her breast, gazing at
him out of the eyes that meant all love to him--a little stiff, wistful
smile parted his lips.
"Mother ... dear...." he whispered.
Then Sophy put her cheek to his. He felt the soft glow of her sheltering
breast.
"Hold me fast ... don't leave me...." he murmured.
"Never, my darling ... my only man ... never, never again...."
"Our Father...." stumbled Bobby, ".... thank you ... _ever_ so much...."
Then he drowsed off again.
* * * * *
A week later Sophy was sitting beside him as usual, and again he was
sleeping. It was drawing towards sunset. A lovely glow filled the sky
and lighted the yellowing trees in the Park.
Bobby waked suddenly and, gazing out of the window near his bed,
pleaded:
"Mother ... I _do_ so want to smell the out of doors.... Couldn't you
open this window?"
Sophy called Anne Harding, who was in the next room.
"Do you think we might open it?" she asked, after telling her what Bobby
wanted. "It's so mild to-day--like St. Martin's summer.... He wants it
so much...."
"Of course we can," Anne answered cheerfully. "Dr. Fresh Air's the best
doctor of 'em all."
She raised the sash and went back into the other room. Doctors and
nurses left those two alone together as much as possible.
The mild air, sweet with fading leaves and bracken, stole softly into
the room.
"How jolly...." breathed the boy. "It's like fairies touching me...."
He turned his face towards his mother.
"Come lie by me, mother ... like that night in Venice," he said.
Sophy lay down beside him and took his head upon her arm. Bobby sighed
deep in the fulness of his content. "I feel so jolly safe this way," he
murmured. They rested quietly in each other's arms, looking up at the
soft gold of the September sky. As on that day, nearly eight years ago,
when Cecil had been laid in the chapel crypt, the yellow leaves drifted
down, gently turning in the delicate air. The fallowed earth gave forth
a fresh, pleasant smell. From the pasture lands below came the lowing of
the Wychcote herd. Now a flight of homing rooks streamed across the sky.
"Oh, how jolly ... how jolly it all is," breathed the boy. "I'm glad I
didn't die.... What a jolly noise the rooks make, don't they, mother?"
"Yes, darling," she answered him.
But what she heard and saw, high, high above their clamorous winging,
was the ecstatic shrilling of the Venice swifts, and their impassioned
arabesques of flight like joy made visible--like a joy above,
beyond--far, far removed....