She never once said mother.
She calmed and a long space was mute. The moon, its duress passed, stood high, serene, alone. The doctor breathed, “She’s passing.” That child raised her lids and her eyes looked out upon her watchers.
Rosalie cried, “Oh, Doda!”
That child sighed. “Oh, mother!”
There was no note of love. There was of tenderness no note. There only was in that child’s sigh a deathly weariness. “Oh, mother!” That child passed out.
They came home in the very early morning. Rosalie was in her working room. She had some things to do. She wrote to Mr. Field a letter of her resignation from Field’s Bank. She only wrote two lines. They ended, “This is Final. I have done.”
She sealed that letter and she moved about the room unlaying and as she unlaid, destroying, all evidences, all treasures, all landmarks, all that in any way referred to or touched upon her working life. There were cherished letters, there were treasured papers. She destroyed them all. From one bundle, not touched for years, dust-covered and time-discoloured, there came out a battered volume. She turned it over. “Lombard Street.” She opened it and saw the eager underlinings and saw the eager margin notes, and ghosts... (it’s written earlier in these pages). She rent the book across its perished cover and pressed it on the fire and on to the flames in the fire. “I have done.”
But she was not done with and she had the feeling that she was not done with. She said to Harry, “This is not the children’s tragedy. This is my tragedy. These were not the children’s faults. These were my transgressions. Life is sacrifice. I never sacrificed. Sacrifice is atonement. It now is not possible for me to atone.”
She was on her knees beside his chair. He stroked her hair.
There was an inquest. Harry went. She stayed at home and Benji stayed with her to be with her. Benji was not to be consoled. His mood was very dreadful. A report was printed in the evening paper before Harry came home. Benji read it and told Rosalie a witness, a man, had been arrested on the coroner’s warrant. Benji said, “I think I’ll go out now, mother, for a little.”