What was she that had outlived him to bear all this? Much, so much, of her was two dry, burning eyes, each in a ring of pain, that had forgotten tears and what they meant. How was it that now, when that Arkwright woman's voice brought back her talk upon the beach, not four-and-twenty hours since, and her unwelcome stirring of the dead embers of a burned-out past—how was it that that past, at its worst, seemed easier to bear than this intolerable now? How had it come about that a memory of twenty years ago, a memory of how she had prayed that her unborn baby might die, rather than live to remind her of that black stain upon the daylight, its father, had become in the end worse to her, in her heart of hearts, than the thing that caused it? And then she fell to wondering when it was that her child first took hold upon her life; first crept into it, then slowly filled it up. She went back on little incidents of that early time, asking herself, was it then, or then, I first saw that she was Sally? She could recall, without adding another pang to her dull, insensate suffering, the moment when the baby, as the Major and General Pellew sat playing chess upon the deck, captured the white king, and sent him flying into the Mediterranean;
and though she could not smile now, could know how she would have smiled another time. Was that white king afloat upon the water still? A score of little memories of a like sort chased one another as her mind ran on, all through the childhood and girlhood of their subject. And now—it was all to end....
And throughout those years this silent man beside her, this man she meant to live for still, for all it should be in a darkened world—this man was ... where? To think of it—in all those years, no Sally for him! See what she had become to him in so short a time—such a little hour of life! Think of the waste of it—of what she might have been! And it was she, the little unconscious thing herself, that sprang from what had parted them. If she had to face all the horrors of her life anew for it, would she flinch from one of them, only to hear that the heart that had stopped its beating would beat again, that the voice that was still would sound in her ears once more?
Another hour! The clock gave out its warning that it meant to strike, in deadly earnest with its long premonitory roll. Then all those twelve strokes so quick upon the heels of those that sounded but now, as it seemed. Another hour from the tale of those still left but reasonable hope; another hour nearer to despair. The reverberations died away, and left the cold insensate tick to measure out the next one, while St. Sennans tower gave its answer as before.
"Shall I go now, Gerry, to see?"
"I say not, darling; but go, if you like." He could not bear to hear it, if it was to be the death-sentence. So Rosalind still sat on to the ticking of the clock.
Her brain and powers of thought were getting numbed. Trivial things came out of the bygone times, and drew her into dreams—back into the past again—to give a moment's spurious peace; then forsook her treacherously to an awakening, each time deadlier than the last. Each time to ask anew, what could it all mean? Sally dead or dying—Sally dead or dying! Each time she repeated the awful words to herself, to try to get a hold she was not sure she had upon their meaning. Each time she slipped again into a new dream and lost it.
Back again now, in the old days of her girlhood! Back in that
little front garden of her mother's house, twenty odd years ago, and Gerry's hand in hers—the hand she held to now; and Gerry's face that now, beside her, looked so still and white and heart-broken, all aglow with life and thoughtless youth and hope. Again she felt upon her lips his farewell kiss, not to be renewed until ... but at the thought she shuddered away, horror-stricken, from the nightmare that any memory must be of what then crossed her life, and robbed them both of happiness. And then her powers of reason simply reeled and swam, and her brain throbbed as she caught the thought forming in it: "Better happiness so lost, and all the misery over again, than this blow that has come upon us now! Sally dead or dying—Sally dead or dying!" For what was she, the thing we could not bear to lose, but the living record, the very outcome, of the poisoned soil in that field of her life her memory shrank from treading?
What was that old Scotchman—he seemed to have come back—what was he saying outside there? Yes, listen! Fenwick starts up, all his life roused into his face. If only that clock would end that long unnecessary roll of warning, and strike! But before the long-deferred single stroke comes to say another hour has passed, he is up and at the door, with Rosalind clinging to him terrified.