‘I’ll explain,’ said Lady Charlotte.  ’He shall not miss you.  If he strips the parson and comes as a man and a servant of the poor, he has nothing to fear.  You’ve done?  The night before my brother Rowsley’s first duel I sat with him at supper and poured his wine out, and knew what was going to happen, didn’t say a word.  No use in talking about feelings.  Besides, death is only the other side of the ditch, and one or other of us must go foremost.  Now then, good-bye.  Empson’s waiting by this time.  Mr. Eglett and Leo shall hear the excuses from me.  Think of anything you may want, while I count ten.’

She held his hand.  He wanted her to be friendly to Lady Ormont, but could not vex her at the last moment, touched as he was by her practical kindness.

She pressed his hand and let it go.

CHAPTER XIV

OLD LOVERS NEW FRIENDS

The cottage inhabited by Weyburn’s mother was on the southern hills over London.  He reached it late in the afternoon.  His mother’s old servant, Martha, spied the roadway at the gate of the small square of garden.  Her steady look without welcome told him the scene he would meet beyond the door, and was the dead in her eyes.  He dropped from no height; he stood on a level with the blow.  His apprehensions on the road had lowered him to meet it.

‘Too late, Martha?’

‘She’s in heaven, my dear.’

‘She is lying alone?’

’The London doctor left half an hour back.  She’s gone.  Slipped, and fell, coming from her room, all the way down.  She prayed for grace to see her son.  She ’ll watch over him, be sure.  You ’ll not find it lone and cold.  A lady sits with it—­Lady Ormont, they call her—­a very kind lady.  My mistress liked her voice.  Ever since news of the accident, up to ten at night; and never eats or drinks more than a poor tiny bit of bread-and-butter, with a teacup.’

’Weyburn went up-stairs.

Aminta sat close to the bedside in a darkened room.  They greeted silently.  He saw the white shell of the life that had flown; he took his mother’s hand and kissed it, and knelt, clasping it.

Fear of disturbing his prayer kept Aminta seated.  Death was a stranger to him.  The still warm, half-cold, nerveless hand smote the fact of things as they were through the prayer for things as we would have them.  The vitality of his prayer was the sole light he had.  It drew sustainment from the dead hand in his grasp, and cowered down to the earth claiming all we touch.  He tried to summon vision of a soaring spirituality; he could not; his understanding and senses were too stricken.  He prayed on.  His prayer was as a little fountain, not rising high out of earth, and in the clutch of death; but its being it had from death, his love gave it food.