Shadows of Flames Part 140

All at once, the trees began to sigh and creak--big drops struck his face--at first spatteringly, then thicker together. Within half an hour of his leaving the house, a heavy, wind-swept rain was pelting down; ten minutes more and he was soaked to the skin.

Now it was that he began to fear for his money, which was more than half in notes. He clenched his hands tightly over as much of it as he could grasp, and plodded on determinedly. But the steady pelting of the rain bewildered him. He wandered from the driveway--tried to find it again, with hands and feet this time. Blown twigs and leaves began to strike him. He walked against a tree--clung to it a moment, panting. Then groped his way on again. But now he was hopelessly lost in the big Park.

A great, soggy ma.s.s of bracken stopped him. He skirted it--walked against more trees. He would not admit in his fierce, dogged little heart that he was lost. He kept rehearsing what he would say to the station-master: "A first-cla.s.s ticket to London, please. Here's the money."

For nearly three hours the boy groped and stumbled in that maze of trees through the driving rain. For some time he had been saying earnest little prayers:

"Our Father who art in heaven ... please help me to get back to my mother. Our Father ... please. Our Father ... please...."

When they found him he was lying unconscious on the sodden gra.s.s under an elm--both hands clenched fast upon as much of the notes and silver in his pockets as he could grasp.

When he had been put to bed, and roused at last he was delirious. He began calling frantically, "My money! my money!" They gave it to him.

Then had begun that monotonous chant of: "A first-cla.s.s ticket to London, please.... A ticket to London.... Here's the money.... I've got the money."

This was why Bellamy did not wonder that Lady Wychcote fainted when he told her that Bobby might die.

LVIII

And now Sophy descended into the darkness of darkness where death and remorse sit brooding together--that vasty cavern of uttermost black gloom which underlies the Valley of the Shadow. Faith does not walk there nor hope. There a thousand years seem not as a day, but a day seems as a thousand years.

As she watched beside her son, she felt a more rending anguish than when she had given him birth, for now her soul was in travail of him. She who had given him life might now have given him death. If he died it would be she who had killed him. "Happiness hunter ... happiness hunter...."

her own phrase rang in her mind.

And this was what her son had come to, while she was absorbed in hunting happiness....

She would not leave him now even long enough to change her clothes.

Nurse Fleming brought her some fresh linen and a dressing-gown to the bedside, and put them on her as if she had been a child. She submitted quietly. The nurse unbound her hair, brushed and plaited it, then made her take an easy chair that she rolled up.

When Bellamy entered again Sophy roused from her tranced watching long enough to ask him to get Anne Harding if it were possible. He went at once to do so.

There was no night or day to Sophy now. The grim, candle-lit hours went by monotonous as a linked chain paid out of darkness into darkness by invisible hands.

Then came intervals of horror--struggles for breath. Wild shadows on the ceiling as nurse and doctor fought together with that other Shadow.

Anne Harding came. Sophy stared at her blindly, and said: "I thought you'd come, Cecil...."

Then after many days, each as a thousand years, a voice came through the smothering blackness in her mind. It said:

"He will live.... He's past the crisis...."

The blackness closed in again.

She came to herself on the bed in Cecil's dressing-room. There was an old etching of Magdalene Tower on the wall at the bed's foot.

She thought: "What a pity to call it 'Maudlin' instead of Magdalene...."

Then everything weltered in on her at once--waves, wreckage, as of a world after flood. She was on her feet. She was in the other room. Anne Harding and Bellamy had hold of her. Her head felt hollow and very light. Her voice sounded light and piping in her own ears.

"Tell ... tell...." she was saying.

Anne Harding put her finger to her lips--glanced towards a smooth white bed. There was a little round of sunlight dancing on it. "Ssssh...."

whispered Anne. "He's asleep.... We mustn't wake him. You've been very ill yourself, but our little man's doing finely."

They helped her to a chair beside the bed--Cecil's old leather armchair.

Anne Harding could see his huge form in it as he used to sit glowering at her between the reduced doses of morphia. It gave her an odd feeling to put Sophy in that chair, and tuck a rug about her.

They all three sat in silence watching the sleeping child.

Sophy whispered once, with her avid eyes on the little, sunken face:

"Is he really only ... asleep?"

For answer, Bellamy lifted one of Bobby's hands and laid it in hers.

"He's so sound it won't wake him," he rea.s.sured her, smiling.

And for Sophy the warmth of that little hand was as the warmth of her own soul's blood.

For a long, long time she sat there with inner vision fixed on the beautiful and terrible star that had risen in the dark night of her soul--the star of a destiny as stern and far more ancient than that foretold at Bethlehem: the star of primordial and eternally recurrent sacrifice ... of the crucifixion of the mother for the child. And a woman if she be so lifted up shall draw all women to her and to each other--for this is the dark yet shining law, whereby the individual's loss is the gain of the whole race.

When Bobby at last opened his eyes they rested on his mother's face. She hardly dared to breathe, it was so wonderful to see those grey eyes looking into hers with recognition. And the boy, too, was afraid to stir or speak lest his mother's face should vanish or change into some dreadful difference as it had vanished and changed in the dreams of fever. But as she knelt, holding his hand against her breast, gazing at him out of the eyes that meant all love to him--a little stiff, wistful smile parted his lips.

"Mother ... dear...." he whispered.

Then Sophy put her cheek to his. He felt the soft glow of her sheltering breast.

"Hold me fast ... don't leave me...." he murmured.

"Never, my darling ... my only man ... never, never again...."

"Our Father...." stumbled Bobby, ".... thank you ... _ever_ so much...."

Then he drowsed off again.

A week later Sophy was sitting beside him as usual, and again he was sleeping. It was drawing towards sunset. A lovely glow filled the sky and lighted the yellowing trees in the Park.

Bobby waked suddenly and, gazing out of the window near his bed, pleaded:

"Mother ... I _do_ so want to smell the out of doors.... Couldn't you open this window?"

Sophy called Anne Harding, who was in the next room.