My arms closed round empty space. I came back to reality. I was kneeling on the cold bed. And she was gone. The feeling of her presence faded away; the sense of love and comfort was abiding. It abides with me still. I was sad, forlorn, but happy to think she had gone back to heaven, and that she loved me enough to come ten million miles to comfort me. She had shown me the truth of the resurrection, of the immortality of the soul; and something far greater, the truth of love.
Hate, pain and weariness were forgotten in the joy of my mother's love, I nestled in it, sheltered in it, clasped it to me, and soon it was wooing me to sleep.
Then—a soft tread in the room—and I was wide awake in a flash. The moon did not light the corner of the room by the door, but I seemed to see a white figure standing there. Was it my angel mother again?
"Mother," I cried faintly. I did not feel the divine sureness of her presence I had known before. It could not be. Yet I heard the soft tread again. The white form moved nearer.
Uncle Simeon! Pity, pity, he had come to flog me naked, torture me in the darkness, rub salt into my wounds as he had threatened; to kill me. I hid my face under the bedclothes in terror, then withdrew as quickly for fear he would stifle me beneath them. His ghostlike figure was still there. "Mother—God—Jesus!"
"Mary, don't be frightened."
It was Robbie.
Reaction from fear was so strong and overwhelming that for a moment I could not think. The first words I could speak were prompted by the fear that had fled, just as the life that has gone enables a tiger still to spring, though shot through the heart a second before.
"Hush, hush," I whispered. "Don't make a sound. What is it? Why are you here? Think, if he found us! Oh, you frightened me. First, I thought it was Mother, then that it was him."
"Mother?" said Robbie. "Are you dreaming, Mary? Are you awake properly? I've got bare feet, and he can't hear whispering. Besides he's snoring. I listened outside his door and it's nearly midnight."