Her father took her hand, and bending softly he took her mother’s, and held the two in his, and one soft shivering moan broke from him; then father and daughter stood in the palpitating silence and waited breathless, but the silence grew and spread like a net around them, crushing hearts, and the breathing of the woman grew less and less and her face whiter, and then a strong cry rent the veil of awful silence and Gwen fell forward as one dead on her mother’s breast.
CHAPTER XXXIX
“Was ever grief like unto my grief!” has been the cry of each wrung heart throughout all ages—the truth is, there is a dreary family likeness among them all, and a horrible absence of originality.
In this particular Gwen Strange could score over the whole sad brood, her grief was aloof, alone, it differed in every point from the kindly race of men, it had no balm and less outlet, she could not cry nor strive, she could not throw her whole soul against fate and fall back with the pain dulled from sheer tiredness.
Every day with the little white mother lying cold on her bed, she still walked in the sun on the south terrace, and cherished her child, but virtue had gone out of her.
“She will kill me,” Mrs. Fellowes told her husband, “if she looks like that long! she’s not tragic, not an atom, nor dramatic; I think she must look like Dante did when he stood before the gates of Saint Ilario.”
“Yes, one hardly dares think of the girl, walking, and eating, and sleeping; and she looks younger than ever I saw her. What is he doing now? I must go up soon.”
“Sitting holding her hand, except when he is told to come to his meals. Of course, knowing the man, one could describe his grief to a T. It’s just himself.”
“What will time do for the two, I wonder?”
“There is something gone from Gwen that no time will give back to her: I wish, oh, I wish I knew how it was at the end. Did that woman go down into the grave still seeking her lost motherhood? Oh, John, John, God in Heaven help women! I wonder if He knew quite everything when He made us, He is all masculine. I don’t think He altogether did or He would have stayed His hand and have had mercy.”