A Valiant Ignorance; vol. 3 of 3 / A Novel in Three Volumes

by Mary Angela Dickens

And now the day was drawing to a close. The doctor had paid his last visit, and the night was drawing on.

There was a moment’s pause after Clemence’s words. Then the doctor wished her a professional good-night, and, as he went downstairs, she turned and went back into the room.

It was a small room, the best which the hotel cared to place at the disposal of sudden illness, but somewhat dingy and ill-appointed. The gaslight, shaded from the face upon the bed, but shedding a garish light upon the rest of the room, touched nothing luxurious, nothing which its present occupant could have realised in connection with herself. Her very rings lying upon the dressing-table and flashing under the gaslight, seemed to protest against such poor surroundings.

But the figure on the bed lay motionless, protesting never more. It lay in blank unconsciousness even when Clemence, crossing the room, stood for a moment looking down, her whole face tender and quivering, and then sank gently on her knees and pressed her lips, with a womanly gesture of infinite pity, to the pale, inanimate hand upon the bed. It was over now, practically, as the doctor, looking at that waning life from a purely physical point of view, had said—all the struggle and the dread, all the courage and the hope, the valiant ignorance of twenty years. And the face upon the pillow was the face of the vanquished—the face of one whose last vivid consciousness of earthly things had been the consciousness of failure.

For many minutes Clemence knelt there, all the feeling of her woman’s soul seeming to expend itself in that soft, mute pressure. Then she rose quietly and moved across the room to make some final preparation for the night. That done, she came back again to the bedside, and doing so she started. The shadowy hands were moving feebly upon the counterpane. From out the grey, pinched face upon the pillow two glazed blue eyes were looking with a restless, searching movement as though in want of something. They rested upon Clemence with no recognition in them; but as her son’s wife drew nearer to her quickly and gently, Mrs. Romayne moved feebly and tried to turn her head upon the pillow, as though moved by some vague, indefinite, and far-away sense of dislike and repulsion. Her white lips moved uncertainly as she did so, and faint sounds came from between them. Clemence bent over her tenderly and tried to catch the words; and they grew gradually a little clearer.

“My boy!” the faint, uncertain voice muttered, “my little boy!”

A great wave of pity and yearning swept over Clemence, and she sank once more to her knees, fixing her eyes on the poor, worn face. Was it of any use to speak? Could her voice reach to those dim lands where the mother groped for her “little boy”?

“He will come!” she said. “He will come—by-and-by!”

As though the voice had roused her without penetrating to her brain, Mrs. Romayne moved again—that slight, feeble movement so eloquent of the extremity of weakness. Her eyes turned to Clemence with that glance of vague, unrecognising dislike.