"Kiss Dave and Dolly for me."
They watched the scarcely breathing, motionless figure on the bed for the best part of an hour, and could mark no change that told of death, nor any sign that told of life. Then Granny Marrable said:—"What was that?" And Gwen answered, as she really thought:—"It was the clock." For she took it for the warning on the stroke of midnight. But old Phoebe said, with a strangely unfaltering voice:—"No—it is the change!" and the sob that broke the silence was not hers, but Ruth's. Old Mrs. Picture had just lived to complete her eighty-first year.
There came a sound of wheels in the road without. Not the doctor, surely, at this time of night! No—for the wheels were not those of his gig. Ruth, going out to the front-door, was met by a broad provincial accent—her son-in-law's. Gwen heard it fall to a whisper before the news of Death; then earnest conversation in an undertone. Gwen was aware that old Phoebe rose from her knees at the bedside, and went to listen through the door. Then she heard her say with a quiet self-restraint that seemed marvellous:—"Tell him—tell John that I will come.... Come back here and speak to me." She thought she caught the words as Ruth returned:—"I must not leave her alone." And she knew they referred to herself.
Then it came home to her that possibly her own youth and her difference of antecedents might somehow encumber arrangements that she knew would have to be carried out. They would be easiest in her absence. At her own suggestion she went away to lie down in the bedroom she had occupied.
Granny Marrable followed her. She had something to say.
"Dear Lady, I have to go. God bless you for all your goodness to my darling sister and to me! You gave her back to me...." That stopped her.
"Oh, Granny, Granny, we have lost her—we have lost her!" She could feel that old Phoebe's tears were running down the hand she had taken to kiss, and she drew it away to fold the old woman fairly in her arms, and kiss the face whose likeness to old Mrs. Picture's she could almost identify by touch. "We have lost her," she repeated, "and you might have had her for so long!"
Said Granny Marrable:—"I shall follow Maisie soon, if the Lord's will is. She might have died, my lady, but for you, unknown to me in London. And who would have told me where they had laid her?"
"Where are you going?"