Nesta felt her father’s absence as light gone:  his eyes rayed light.  Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win Matilda Pridden.  She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell of the hilarity he roused.  A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow.  Matilda Pridden’s gaze on him and the people was painful to behold:  Nesta saw her mind.  She set herself to study a popular assembly.  It could be serious to the call of better leadership, she believed.  Her father had been telling her of late of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be once more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring materialism—­some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey.  Her father’s absence and the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed.  They had talked together; not much:  enough for each to see at either’s breast the wells from the founts of life.

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in.  He took her hand.  She stood-up to his look.  He said to Matilda Pridden:  ‘Come with us; she will need you.’

‘Speak it,’ said Nesta.

He said to the other:  ‘She has courage.’

‘I could trust to her,’ Matilda Pridden replied.

Nesta read his eyes.  ‘Mother?’

His answer was in the pressure.

‘Ill?’

‘No longer.’

‘Oh!  Dartrey.’  Matilda Pridden caught her fast.

‘I can walk, dear,’ Nesta said.

Dartrey mentioned her father.

She understood:  ‘I am thinking of him.’

The words of her mother:  ‘At peace when the night is over,’ rang.  Along the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an applausive audience was as much a thunder as rage would have been.  It was as void of human meaning as a sea.

CHAPTER XLII

THE LAST

In the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a scribbled message from Victor, which he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his intelligence became aware of what dread blow had befallen the stricken man.  He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly.  He remembered the bearing of the promise.  Mr. Peridon’s hurried explanatory narrative made the request terrific, out of tragically lamentable.  A semblance of obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it.  Mr. Barmby prayed at heart for guidance further.

The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob in the throat.