The change in her appearance was wonderful; her solemn stateliness and abstraction were gone. Here was something she did not know. The flush of anxiety came to her cheeks, her eyes contracted, her lips fell apart.
“Tell me,” she said, “for the love of God!”
No one moved. They looked at each other with pale, alarmed faces. How could they tell her? Geoff stepped forward and took her by the arm very gently. “Will you come with me?” he said. “Something has happened; something that will grieve you deeply. I—I promised Dick to tell you, but not here. Won’t you come with me?”
She drew herself out of his grasp with some impatience. “There’s been some new trouble,” she said to herself—“some new trouble! No doubt more violence. Oh, God, forgive him; but he does not know what he’s doing. It’s you, my young lord?—you know it’s true what I’ve been saying. But this new trouble, what is it?—more blood? Oh, tell me the worst; I can bear it all, say, even if he was dead.”
“’Lizabeth,” said Geoff, with tears in his eyes—and again everybody looked on as at a tragedy—“you are a brave woman; you have borne a great deal in your life. He is dead; but that is not all.”
She did not note, nor perhaps hear, the last words. How should she? The first was enough. She stood still in the midst of them, all gazing at her, with her hands clasped before her. For a moment she said nothing. The last drop of blood seemed to ebb from her brown cheeks. Then she raised her face upward, with a smile upon it. “The Lord God be praised,” she said; “He’s taken my lad before me.”
And when they brought to her the seat she had rejected, ’Lizabeth allowed herself to be placed upon it. The extreme tension of both body and mind seemed to have relaxed. The look of tragic endurance left her face. A softened aspect of suffering, a kind of faint smile, like a wan sunbeam, stole over it. The moisture came to her strained eyes. “Gone? Is he gone at last? On the hill-side was it?—in some wild corner, where none but God could be near, not his mother? And me that was dreading and dreading I would be taken first; for who would have patience like his mother? But after all, you know, neighbours, the father comes foremost; and had more to do with him—more to do with him—than even me.”
“Take her away, Geoff,” said Sir Henry. The men were all overcome with this scene, and with the knowledge of what remained to be told. Sir Henry was not easily moved, but there was something even in his throat which choked him. He could not bear it, though it was nothing to him. “Geoff, this is not a place to tell her all you have got to tell. Take her away—take her—to Lady Stanton.”
“Nay, nay,” she said; “it’s my deathdoom, but it’s not like other sorrow—I know well what grief is—when I heard for certain my Lily was dead and gone, and me never to see her more. But this is not the same; it’s my death, but I cannot call it sorrow; not like the loss of a son. I’m glad too, if you understand that. Poor lad!—my Abel! Ay, ay; you’ll not tell me but what God understands, and is more pitiful of His handiwork, say than the like of you or me.”
“Come with me,” said Geoff, taking her by the arm. “Come, and I will tell you everything, my poor ’Lizabeth. You know you have a friend in me.”