In September Mary sent for her again.
Mary was very ill. She lay on her bed, and Rowcliffe and her sister
stood on either side of her. She gazed from one to the other with eyes
of terror and entreaty. It was as if she cried out to them--the two
who were so strong--to help her. She stretched out her arms on
the counterpane, one arm toward each of them; her little hands,
palm-upward, implored them.
Each of them laid a hand in Mary's hand that closed on it with a
clutch of agony.
Rowcliffe had sat up all night with her. His face was white and
haggard and there was fear and misery in his eyes. They never looked
at Gwenda's lest they should see the same fear and the same misery
there. It was as if they had no love for each other, only a profound
and secret pity that sprang in both of them from their fear.
Only once they found each other, outside on the landing, when they
had left Mary alone with Hyslop, the old doctor from Reyburn, and the
nurse. Each spoke once.
"Steven, is there really any danger?"
"Yes. I wish to God I'd had Harker. Do you mind sending him a wire? I
must go and see what that fool Hyslop's doing."
He turned back again into the room.
Gwenda went out and sent the wire.
But at noon, before Harker could come to them, it was over. Mary lay
as Alice had lain, weak and happy, with her child tucked in the crook
of her arm. And she smiled at it dreamily.
The old doctor and the nurse smiled at Rowcliffe.
It couldn't, they said, have gone off more easily. There hadn't been
any danger, nor any earthly reason to have sent for Harker. Though, of
course, if it had made Rowcliffe happier--!
The old doctor added that if it had been anybody else's wife Rowcliffe
would have known that it was going all right.
And in the evening, when her sister stood again at her bedside, as
Mary lifted the edge of the flannel that hid her baby's face, she
looked at Gwenda and smiled, not dreamily but subtly in a triumph that
was almost malign.
That night Gwenda dreamed that she saw Mary lying dead and with a dead
child in the crook of her arm.
She woke in anguish and terror.