With his hands clenched very firmly and an uncomfortable tightening of the throat, Richard looked straight and long at the portrait of his ancestress to-night, and thought again, as he had often thought before, how strange it was that God did not make mothers in a mould like this. And in that moment he committed every line of the portrait to memory, never to be erased—the oval face, and soft hair, a dark curtain, banded over the low white forehead; the grave eyes that pursued you to the door, eyes painted with a hint of tears, a favourite trick in a certain school of art; the turn of the proud head, the white neck visible beneath a veil of drapery. The moonlight fell upon all lovingly. One little beam of light travelled upwards and tried to linger in the shadows of the misty eyes.
"GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"
Richard turned, his heart throbbing convulsively. Was that a footfall? He crept for shelter to the picture of a malignant-looking gentleman of the tenth century, whose full-length portrait moved on pulleys, and which was now drawn out to an acute angle, half across the gallery, as Dan started forward. Both waited in silence for some time, but the sound—if sound it were—was light at best, and did not return.
Richard came back to Margaret Cunningham. Sentimentality was childish, the sort of thing a future empire-builder must infallibly renounce.
"Good-bye," Richard said gravely; "Dan and I shan't be here again for ever so long. We're going away—both of us—but we mean some day to come back. I'm growing up, you see; I'm going to make my name, and a big future, and keep Glune."
In spite of the brave words he walked away from the picture drearily enough, fancying that Margaret's eyes were extraordinarily misty, because his own were drowned in tears.... He shivered. How cold it had become! He must have been there far longer than he intended; his bare feet on the parquet floor were cold as death. He whistled to Dan, who had, contrary to his usual custom, scampered away to snuffle anxiously at the door.
Outside, through one light pane of glass, Richard could see the snow thick on the white stone balustrade. How silently and swiftly it must have fallen! When he came in there were only a few flakes. Eager to be off, he ran down the gallery. But Dan, evading his master's hand with a whine, leapt forward again, scenting eagerly, and then scratched at the door with a low whine of terror.
Something had fallen in the corridor beyond the gallery, something heavy and dark. Something that pressed against the door that Richard strove to open, at first gently, then with a sudden sickening dread that taxed his self-control. As the door gave way at last, it pressed the unknown obstacle back with it slowly—the unknown obstacle at the sight of which the boy fell on his knees with a cry. For it was a woman's figure—his mother's—which lay prone in the moonlight, with thin arms stretched towards him, giving way too late to the longing they had crushed for years.
Face to face with death for the second time, Richard found himself more wondering than pitiful, more perplexed than sad. How swiftly God's arrows struck—how unerringly! The terrified, staring eyes were fixed in their last challenge of the Almighty Power. Even in death there was no peace.