Miss Chris to rest, and, softly closing the door, sat down in a chair beside her father’s bed.  It was the high white bed that had known the marriage, birth, and death of a century of Battles.  In it her father was born; beside it, kneeling at prayer, her mother had died.  The stately tester frame had seen generations come and go, and had remained unchanged.  Now its stiff white curtains made a ghastly drapery above the purple face.

Eugenia sat motionless, her thoughts vaguely circling about the still figure before her.  It was not her father—­this she felt profoundly—­it was some strange shape that had taken his place, or she was held by some farcical nightmare from which she should awake presently with a start.  The half-used glasses on the little table beside her; the candle burned down in the socket, and overlooked; the tightly corked phials of useless drugs; the strong odour of mustard from the saucer in which a plaster had been mixed—­these things struck upon her faltering consciousness with a shock of horrible reality.  The odour of the mustard was more real than the breathing of the body on the bed.

As she sat there, she thought of her mother—­the pale, still woman who had lain beautiful and dead where her father was dying now.  She came to her as from a faded miniature, wistful, holy, at rest—­blessed and above reproach.  Her heart went out to her as to one standing near, hidden by the long white curtains—­nearer than Aunt Chris asleep upstairs, nearer than Bernard, who was coming to her, nearer than the great form on the bed.  Closer than all other things was that spiritual presence.  Then she thought of her old negro mammy, who had died when she was but a baby—­her mother’s nurse and hers.  She recalled the beloved black face beneath the snowy handkerchief, the restful bosom in blue homespun, the tireless arms that had rocked her into slumber.  Then of Jim, the dog, true friend and faithful playmate.  All the lives that she had loved and had been bereft of gathered closer, closer in the gray shadows.

Her gaze passed to the window, seeking in the sad landscape the little graveyard where they were lying.  The rain came between her and the clouded hill—­descending softly and insistently between her eyes and the end of her search.  Against the panes the dripping branches of the shivering mimosa tree beat themselves and moaned.  A chill seized her and, rising, she went to the hearth, noiselessly piling wood upon the charred and waning logs, which crumbled and sent up a thin flame.  She hurried to the bed and sat down again, her eyes on the blanket that rose and fell with the difficult breath.  As she looked at the large, familiar face, tracing its puffed outline and gross colouring, it resolved itself into her earliest remembrance—­throughout her childhood he had been her slave and she his tyrant.  What wish of hers had he ever ignored?  With what demand had he ever failed to comply?  At the end of the long life what had remained to him except herself—­the single compensation—­the one reward?  The pity of it smote her as with a lash.  He had lived with such fine bravery, and he had had so little—­so little, and yet more than myriads of the men that live and die.  That live and die!  About her and beyond her she seemed to hear the rushing of great multitudes—­the passing of the countless souls through the gates of death.