Her face was the face of a saint—calm, passionless, and happy, with a gentle, chastened happiness. I knew, when I looked upon her, that she had left the burden of her great sorrow behind. But she had paid a price for it. Pale and fragile as she had always appeared, she seemed now to have been wasted by some fierce, scathing ordeal, which had driven out of her features everything human and left only a spiritual life. As she moved slowly forward into the drive and I saw her even more distinctly, she seemed to me to have gained a strange, new beauty; but it was a beauty which made me look upon her with a sudden shuddering fear.
I hurried down to her side and she welcomed me with a smile such as I had seldom seen on her face, and which was altogether in harmony with her softened expression. Then she took my arm and we turned towards home.
“You are happier now, mother?” I ventured to ask her, and she answered me by silently pressing my arm.
We passed down the avenue, thickly strewn with decaying leaves, along the winding lane, and through the gate which led up to Ive’s Head Hill. Once or twice as we were making the ascent I fancied that she hung heavily upon my arm and I asked if she were tired; but she only shook her head. We had reached the summit before the terrible fear which had been gnawing at my heart took definite shape. Then, for the first time since we had started upon our return journey, I was able to look into her face, which she had been keeping averted from me, and when I saw the ghastly change which had crept into it, my heart stood still and all my senses seemed numbed with fear.
“Mother,” I cried, “you are ill! What is the matter? Oh, speak to me—do!”
She had fallen into my arms, and her hands, which touched mine as they fell to her side, were as cold as ice. Her face was like the face of one who has already triumphed over the shadows of death. Far away at our feet the Cross of Calvary was standing out with rugged vividness against the fast darkening sky and upon it her closing eyes were steadily fixed. Her lips were slightly parted in a happy, confident smile, and her whole being seemed absorbed in the most religious devotion. Once she whispered my name and faintly pressed my hand; then her lips moved again and I heard the dread sound of the solemn prayer, faltered out in a broken whisper, “In manus Tuas, Domine!”
In my heart I knew that she was dying, and that human help would be of no avail. Yet I was loth to abandon all hope, and setting her gently down I looked anxiously around. On the summit of the next range of hills a man was sitting on horseback, looking down upon the monastery—a motionless figure against the sky. I cried out to him, and at the sound of my voice he started round and looked towards us; then, suddenly digging the spurs deep into the sides of his great black horse, he came thundering up the side of the hill at a pace which made the ground shake beneath my feet like the tremblings of an earthquake.
“What is wrong?” he cried hoarsely; and, looking into his face, I recognised Mr. Ravenor.
I pointed to my mother’s prostrate figure, and, gazing at him with dry eyes, I answered mechanically:
“She is dying!”