Mrs. Mathewson and Gaunt stood facing each other in the living-room. If there had been enmity between them, they did not remember it; a grave silence held between them, for each knew that death lay very near, not to Peggy only, but to themselves.
“There’s still a chance to go back, Reuben,” she said at last. “Ye may or may not have caught it by stepping into t’ house, and ye need say naught to nobody; but, if ye once go up into th’ chamber—an’ I see your eyes on th’ stair-door—there’ll be no return for ye.”
A troubled moaning sounded from the room above, and Gaunt laid a hand on the sneck of the staircase door. “Maybe ’twould ease the lass if she knew I was near,” he said gently.
“She willun’t know, she’s ower far gone, I tell ye! Reuben, my lad, have just a thought for yourseln.”
He glanced at her, with his curious, new look of gravity and self-effacement, and went up the stair. The widow heard his step on the boards overhead, then a startled cry. She knew what the cry meant. The Peggy who had watched him win the fell-race, who had danced on Linsall Green, was not the lass who lay on the bed up there; for the fever laid ugly hands on the faces of its victims, and on their minds its hold was still more cruel. There were no wild outbursts of delirium, followed by intervals of sanity and hope; there was only the low, helpless muttering, the sluggish apathy, the denial of all power or will to find healing from any human ministry.
Widow Mathewson paced up and down the living-room with her manlike strides; and by and by she heard Gaunt pacing up and down the floor above. It was Gaunt’s hour of bitterness, the first hour of his heedless life that had found him ready to hearken to his lesson. If he had dealt ill with Peggy o’ Mathewson’s in times past, he was paying something of the penalty now. It was not so much the bodily change in her that shocked and terrified him; it was the knowledge, brought suddenly home to him, that she did not care whether he stood at her bedside or not, that likely she would never care again in this world. The incessant moaning maddened him; it seemed to tell of an anguish that was beyond reach of his help. He could not believe that Peggy herself felt nothing, knew nothing—that it was he, in full vigour of mind and body, who suffered for her, just by looking on.
He came down the stone stairway at last, and the widow ceased her restless walk. She looked at his face. It was white and stern, but there was no trace of personal fear on it.
“It was as well I came,” he said.
“As well you came,” she echoed. “You say that after—after going in yond up-stairs room?”
“Yes, mother. You may be tough, but ’twould drive ye mad to live alone with what’s in the house here. Mother, is there naught at all we can do to ease her?” he broke off.