"Quite sure."
"But--that's all we can do for her?"
"I--I'm afraid so. Unless Sir Heron----" They spoke in whispers, like people already in the presence of death. Kate, running downstairs, disturbed them. Kate's eyes were swollen. Tears choked her voice.
"The doctor says, will you please come up, Mr. Ronnie."
Swiftly Ronnie passed up that gloomy balustered staircase. He couldn't think. He couldn't feel. Pain numbed his limbs, numbed his brain. Just outside his mother's room stood Smithers. She, too--he could see--had been crying. He wanted to console her--but his lips found no word.
His mother's door was ajar. Pushing it open, he knew fear. In that room waited Death--an impalpable figure--a figure of mist--icy-cold.
Entering the room, he was just aware of the local doctor's tweeded figure stooped over his mother's bed, and of Sir Heron--hand on his arm--whispering, "It's the end, I'm afraid, Cavendish."
Dr. Thompson made way; and, still incapable of thought, Ronnie moved toward the bed. A light burned by the bed. In the ring of the light he saw a face. The face, he knew, had been in pain, in terror. But now both the terror and the pain were gone from it. Morphia--eons ago some one must have told him about the morphia--had driven the terror and the pain away.
Could this gray countenance--this mask of shrunken cheek-bones, of closed eyes, and open mouth--be Julia's? If Julia, surely Julia was already dead. Surely the last breath had already left that wasted body, motionless under its bedclothes.
He became aware that his mother was not yet dead. Every now and then, breath gurgled in her throat. The gurgle of her breath terrified him. She was still in pain--in pain.