And “Very bad, poor baby,” was his answer. “I ought to have been here before, but have been at a deathbed.”
“Whose?” they asked, in the lowered tones death claims.
“Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne,” he said, and hurried away up to the house.
Nellie went back to the low hedge. From there she could just see the palely-lighted window upstairs, and the large shadows on the blind. She saw Meg move across to the corner where the bed stood, then the nurse’s cap was outlined, Alan’s head and shoulders, the doctor’s.
More and more icy grew the hand at her heart, whiter and whiter shone the moon, longer and longer every minute took to pass. A sudden gust of wind blew over the pampas clumps full into her face, and the air was still again. Perhaps with that very wind Essie had left them.
She fell on her knees with wide, outstretched arms, and dropped her face on the low hedge. The twigs and leaves scratched and pricked her, the ground made her knees ache, the night air was freezing her; but that was happiness. The sky she dare not look at; but she was compelled to pray again, just to say God, God, God! and shiver and [251] ]writhe and bite her lips. There was no help for her on earth, and she must shriek to God even though He heard not.
Suddenly the moonlight faded, the garden, the silent house, the pale lights.
She was at the top of a hill, and at the foot was the reddest sunset the world had ever seen. She was a little child again, flying from the bark hut and awful gathering shadows to the fence that skirted the road along which help would come. She was a child flinging herself on the ground, face downward, and crying, “Make her better, God!—God, make her better,—oh, can’t you make her better!”
But Judy had died. He had not listened to her then, He would not listen now.
She lifted a face of agony and looked at the sky again. It had grown softer, a grey more tender, and deepened with blue; the moon hung lower, a yellow warmth had crept into it.