‘That’s a lie!’ said Oliver. Was it to be supposed he could think of civility at such a moment? A desperate tremor seized hold upon him. He got up and turned, half blinded with horror and excitement, towards the door. ‘I came here,’ he said, ‘because—because—’
Ah! because—why? What could he say? He had meant to be kind—to make up to her somehow, he could not tell how, for the fact that he was happy and she dying. He stood arrested with those words upon his lips, which he could not say, half turned from her, facing the door, as if he would have broken away.
And then there came a low, despairing cry from the bed—the cry as of a lost creature. ‘Oh, Oliver, Oliver! you loved me once. Oh, don’t go and leave me! You loved me, and I loved you.’
He would have cried out that it was false, but the breathless voice, broken by panting that sounded like the last struggle, the voice of the woman who was dying, while he was full of life and force, silenced him in spite of himself. The mother had flown to her to raise her head, to give her something from a glass on the table, and he, too, turned again, awe-stricken, thinking the last moment had come.
‘And you can stand and see her like this,’ said the woman by the bedside, in a low tone. ‘You that are well and strong and have the world before you; and let her go out of it at five-and-twenty, a girl as you made an idol of once, a girl as you have helped to bring to this, and won’t lift a finger to satisfy her before she dies, to give her what she wants, and what will make her happy for the last hour—before she dies!’
The girl herself was past speaking. She lay back against her mother’s breast, her own worn and emaciated shoulders heaving with convulsive struggles for the departing breath. She could not speak, but those eyes, which were so living while she was dying, turned to him with a look of such appeal, such entreaty that he could not bear the sight. They were large with fever and weakness, liquid and clear and dilated, as the eyes of the dying often are, like two stars glowing out in sudden light from the pale night of her face. He cried out, ‘What do you want me to do?’ with despair in his voice, and a sense that whatever they asked of him he could not now refuse.
‘To do her justice,’ said the mother. ‘Oh, Mr. Wentworth, to make up to her for all she’s suffered. To make her an honest woman before she dies.’
The girl’s dying lips moved, but no sound was heard: a pathetic smile came upon her lips, her eyes held him with that prayer, too intense for words. Oliver turned away his head not to see them, then turned back again as if in them there was some spell. A passionate impatience pricked his heart, for their inference was not true. They had not been to each other what was said. Love! love was too great a word to be mentioned here at all. It had been levity, folly; it had not been love. She had been too slight for such a word; but she was not too slight for death. For that solemnity nothing is too slight or too poor; and death is as great as love is, and compels respect. She drew his eyes to her so that he could not free himself. He said in an unnatural, stifled voice, ‘Whatever you want from me—this is not the—the time. There is nothing to be done to-night—and after to-night’—he could not say the words—he waved his hand towards the bed. She was dying now—now—before their eyes.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the mother, with dreadful calm. ‘She won’t last out the night. Very likely she won’t, but that’s what nobody knows except her Maker. If she don’t, you can’t do nothing, and nobody here will say a word. But if she do—! Give her your word, Mr. Wentworth, as you’ll marry her to-morrow if she lives, and she’ll die happy. She’ll die happy; whether it comes to anything or whether it don’t. Mr. Wentworth, sir, do, for the love of God!’
The girl recovered a little gasping breath. ‘I’ll die happy. I’ll die happy, whether it comes to anything or not.’ Even this little rally showed more and more the nearness of the end.