She had an old Paisley shawl thrown over her nightgown, and in the glow of the dip she carried she looked strangely young and singularly unfearful. There was almost a smile on her face turned and lifted towards the sea.
He could feel that she was waiting, and her tense expectation kept him still. A sandbank broke away just below with a thud and splash, weirdly loud in the quiet. A chill snap of wind broke through the window, flaring the flame and clattering the unfastened pane without. An advance-battalion of raindrops smote the glass like a challenge, and died. Stillness again, and the waiting silence; and then out on the dark came the steady rush of the night-wave.
He raised himself on his elbow, ready to go to her, but she did not flinch as the sound filled the room, and her face did not change, even though the after-rain, riding on the wind, spattered through the open square. There was a hiss in the water to-night, a muttered hint of hate. The dead hour and the live wave together caught him into a vague dread, and he stayed where he was, wondering. The night and the water and his mother’s face; for she was listening, so he felt, not only to the incoming tide, but to something that had as yet neither voice nor being. He almost shivered as the pane beat against the wall like a chained and frightened thing.
So long she stood, in the tossed light dipping and leaping like a chased elf, so still she stood, her white face strained to that which was not yet without, she grew into his drifting dream as he dropped gradually to his pillow. But when the water was well past, brimming the banks and pressing fast up the bay, he heard her draw in her breath and let it out in a great sigh.
“One!” she said, like a prisoner counting towards release, or a sufferer looking ahead in unbearable pain; and then, as she had said to Lancaster, down below: “How long? Oh, how long?”
Lup moved again, and this time she heard him and came to his bed, and when she looked at him he was not afraid any more, for her eyes, when they rested on her son, saw nothing beyond.
“Nay, what Mother, you’ll get your death of cold!” he broke out in his deep voice. “Get back to your bed. You’ll have the old man seeking you.”
She stayed a moment longer, looking at his ruffled head and drowsy eyes, but she did not speak or stoop to kiss him—only at last stretched out one of her strange, worn hands and smoothed the sheet under his throat.
Lying in the dark when the door had closed, he heard her in the passage. “One!” she said again, like the numb stroke of a passing-bell; and through the silent house he followed the piteous voice: “How long? How many? How long?”