She had probably come to life again for some brief moments, and fought and gasped for breath, and then by a last mighty effort had flung herself on the side of the bed.
With so much strength she must have recovered had he not hastened her death with that wet rag! He faced that thought with the strong callousness he had shown all through.
But the boy? He looked upon the wretched object crouched upon the floor, and advanced towards him. Taking him by the shoulder, he shook him sharply. The boy looked up with vacant eyes, and Darkham motioned him imperiously to move aside. At any moment some one might come to the door, and though it was locked, still, to refuse admission—-
Edwy, trained to fear him, rose sullenly, and once more retreated into the shadow of the curtains, and, squatting down upon the ground, sat gibbering, his eyes always on the corpse.
Darkham, stooping, lifted his wife. With some fear he gazed upon her. But she was now dead indeed. He laid her back upon the bed and felt her heart. It was still. Once again he closed the eyes, sponged the slight bloodstains from her face, and rearranged the bed-clothes. Again he folded the arms across her breast in the exact position in which they had been when the nurses saw her last. The minutest detail he thought of and followed out.
The slight distortion of the features, now visible, would not be noticed or treated seriously. And an hour or two, besides, would probably do away with it. An hour after death makes the dead face so different, even when death has been hard.
It was all finished now, and the boy only remained to be got rid of; he could not stay here.
Much as Darkham disliked being left alone in this terrible room, still he disliked more the companionship of this loathsome idiot. There was always the thought, too, that he knew—had seen! For the first time he felt thankful that his only child had been born deaf and dumb, and a fool. If only he had been born blind as well!
He unlocked the door softly, and motioned to his son to go. The idiot shook his head. He understood what his father meant, but, though accustomed to obey him, he now felt as if to leave the room that held his mother—a mother so strange, so changed, but still his mother—was impossible to him. She might wake and want him.
Darkham imperiously, by a second gesture, ordered him to leave the room, and, seeing he did not move, went toward him.