Hector Ernescliffe arrived when the holidays began; and his agony of sorrow, when she failed to recognise him, moved Dr. May to exert himself earnestly for his consolation; and, at the same time, Tom, in a gentle, almost humble manner, paid a sort of daughter-like attention to the smallest services for his father, as if already accepting him as his especial charge.
It was midnight, on the longest night of the year; Ethel was lying on her bed, and had fallen into a brief slumber, when her father’s low, clear voice summoned her: “Ethel, she is going!”
There was a change on the face, and the breath came in labouring gasps. Richard lifted her head, and her eyes once more opened; she smiled once more.
“Papa!” she said, “dear papa!”
He threw himself on his knees beside her, but she looked beyond him, “Mamma! Alan! oh, there they are! More! more!” and, as though the unspeakable dawned on her, she gasped for utterance, then looked, with a consoling smile, on her father. “Over now!” she said—and the last struggle was ended. That which Richard laid down was no longer Margaret May.
Over now! The twenty-five years’ life, the seven years’ captivity on her couch, the anxious headship of the motherless household, the hopeless betrothal, the long suspense, the efforts for resignation, the widowed affections, the slow decay, the tardy, painful death agony—all was over; nothing left, save what they had rendered the undying spirit, and the impress her example had left on those around her.
The long continuance of the last suffering had softened the actual parting; and it was with thankfulness for the cessation of her pain that they turned away, and bade each other good-night.
Ethel would not have believed that her first wakening to the knowledge that Margaret was gone could have been more fraught with relief than with misery. And, for her father, it seemed as if it were a home-like, comfortable thought to him, that her mother had one of her children with her. He called her the first link of his Daisy Chain drawn up out of sight; and, during the quiet days that ensued, he seemed as it were to be lifted above grief, dwelling upon hope. His calmness impressed the same on his children, as they moved about in the solemn stillness of the house; and when Harry, pale, and shocked at the blow to him so sudden, came home, the grave silence soothed his violence of grief; and he sat beside his, father or Mary, speaking in undertones of what Margaret had loved to hear from him, of Alan Ernescliffe’s last moments.
Mary gave way to a burst of weeping when she sought, in vain, for daisies in the wintry garden; but Hector Ernescliffe went down to the cloisters, and brought back the lingering blossoms to be placed on Margaret’s bosom.
The dog Toby had followed him, unseen, to the cloister; and he was entering the garden, when he was struck by seeing the animal bounding, in irrepressible ecstasy, round a lad, whose tarpaulin hat, blue-bordered collar, and dark blue dress, showed him to be a sailor, as well as the broad-shouldered, grizzled, elderly man, who stood beside him.