"He wants his animals," said Marcella, the tears pouring down her cheeks. She lifted them and put them on his breast, laying the cold fingers over them.
Then he tried to speak.
"Daddy!" he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; "take 'em to
Daddy!"
She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, and shaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterious smile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing life that ran through the limbs.
A heavy sound swung through the air—a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurd held up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She knelt there, struck motionless by terror—by recollection.
"Oh, Jim!" she said, under her breath—"my Jim!"
The plaintive tone—as of a creature that has not even breath and strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it—broke Marcella's heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband's death were words of prayer—the old shuddering cries wherewith the human soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompassing Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.
CHAPTER XV.
Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the door of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had heard his ring, was hurrying away.
"Don't go," he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. "I want all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has actually brought herself to regard this man's death as in some sort my doing—as something which ought to separate us?"