Bitterly he fell to reproaching himself--as all the lovers of all the Aliettes do reproach themselves in those hours when love comes not to their aid--for ever having persuaded her to run away with him. What was the use of blaming Brunton, of hating Brunton? He himself and no other was responsible. He felt the flame of his old hatred against Brunton blow back, scorching his own head. Truly loving Aliette, he should have been satisfied--as Robert Fielding had been satisfied--with renunciation.
"I've been selfish," he thought, "selfish"; and, so thinking, remembered his mother.
Toward her, too, he had played the complete egoist; forgetful--in his self-concentration, in the absorption of his work and the battle against his enemy--of her need for him, of her illness.
And abruptly, luminous through the darkness which had settled on his mind, Ronnie saw a picture of Daffadillies. The great house stood foursquare under the moon. Trees spired sable from the gleam of its lawns. Its roof glittered under a glittering sky. From its gabled windows glowed the saffron welcome of lamp-light. Behind one of those gabled windows, his mother, who had loved him all her life, who had grudged him never a thought, never a sacrifice, lay ill; mortally ill perhaps.
And suddenly it seemed to Julia's son as though the darkness of his own mind came between the moon and Daffadillies. Black clouds, ragged and menacing, drifted down from the glitter of the skies, blurring the saffron window-gleams. Mists swirled about the spring trees, across the gleam of the lawns. Watching the menace of those ragged clouds, the cold swirl of the mists, he knew fear, the old battle-fear of death.
If only the clouds would break, the mists roll away from Daffadillies. But there came no break in the ragged clouds. Black they banked, and blacker, round the high moon; till the moon was no more, and only the ghost of a ghostly house trembled--as smoke seen through smoked glass--through the swirl of the mist.
Then even the ghost of Daffadillies vanished; and, sightless, he peered at the void.
Till, out of the void, sound issued--the sound of a woman's voice--of his mother's voice: "Ronnie! Ronnie! I am afraid. Come to me."
2
With a start, Ronald Cavendish awoke.