Tongues of Conscience Part 23

She stopped. Her emotion was painful. Mark was more and more puzzled.

"Angry with your mother? At such a time!" he said.

"No--you wouldn't. I am upset. I am foolish. Let me go first to tell her you are coming. Follow me in a few minutes."

She went out leaving her husband amazed. When she arrived in Eaton Square Mr. Ardagh met her in the hall.

"She is worse," he said. "Much worse. The end cannot be far off."

"The beginning," Catherine said, looking him straight in the eyes.

He understood then which parental spirit had conquered the spirit of the child, and he smiled--sadly or gladly? He hardly knew. So strangely does death play with us all. Catherine went upstairs into her mother's room, which was dim and very hot. She shut the door, sent away the nurse, and went up to the bedside.

"Mother," she said, "William Foster is coming. Do you feel that you can see him?"

Mrs. Ardagh was perfectly conscious, although so near death.

"Yes," she said. "G.o.d means me to give him a message--G.o.d means me."

She lay silent; Catherine sat by her. Presently she spoke again.

"I shall convince him," she said quietly. "That is meant. If I did not G.o.d would strike him down. He would be cut off. But I shall make him know himself."

And then she repeated, with a sort of feeble but intense conviction,

"If I did not G.o.d would strike him down--yes--yes."

Something--perhaps the fact that her mother was so near death, so close to that great secret,--made her words, faltering though they were, go home to Catherine with the most extraordinary poignancy, as words had never gone before. She felt that it was true, that there was no alternative. Either Mark must be convinced now, by this bedside, in this hot, dark room from which a soul was pa.s.sing, or he would, by some accident, by some sudden means, be swept away from the world that he was injuring, that he was poisoning.

Mrs. Ardagh seemed to grow more feeble with every moment that pa.s.sed.

And suddenly a great fear overtook Catherine, the dread that Mark would come too late, and then--G.o.d's other means! She trembled, and strained her ears to catch the sound of wheels. Mrs. Ardagh now seemed to be sinking into sleep--Catherine strove to rouse her. She stirred and said, "What is it?" in a voice that sounded peevish.

Just then there was a gentle tap on the door. Catherine sprang up, and hastened to it with a fast beating heart. Mr. Ardagh stood there.

"How is she?" he whispered.

"I think she is not in pain. She is just resting. Has Mark come?"

"No."

"Please send him up directly he comes."

She spoke with a hushed, but with an intense, excitement.

"I want him to--to say good-bye to her," she added.

Mr. Ardagh nodded, and went softly downstairs.

"Is that he--is that William Foster?" said Mrs. Ardagh feebly from the bed.

"No, mother. But he will be here directly."

"I'm very tired," said the sick woman in reply. And again her thin voice sounded irritable.

Catherine sat down by her and held her hand tightly, as if that grasp could keep her in this life. A few minutes pa.s.sed. Then there was the sound of a cab in the Square. It ceased in front of the house. Catherine could scarcely breathe. She bent down to the dying woman.

"Mother!"

"Well?"

"Mother, he has come--but I want to tell you something--are you listening?"

"Move the pillow."

Catherine did so.

"Mother, I want to tell you. William Foster is----"

The bedroom door opened and Mark entered softly. Catherine stood up, still holding her mother's hand, which was now very cold. Mark came to the bed on tiptoe.

"Mother," Catherine said, "William Foster"--Mark started--"is here. Tell him--tell him."

There was no reply from the bed.

"Kitty," Mark whispered, "what is this?"

"Hush!" she said. "Mother--mother, don't you hear me?"

Again there was no reply. Then Catherine bent down and cast a hard, staring glance of enquiry on her mother.

Mrs. Ardagh was dead.

Catherine looked up at Mark.

"G.o.d's other means," she thought.

The death of her mother left a strong and terrible impression upon Catherine. She brooded over it continually and over Mrs. Ardagh's last words. The last words of the dying often dwell in the memories of the living. Faltering, feeble, sometimes apparently inconsequent, they appear nevertheless prophetic, touched with the dignity of Eternal truths. Lives have been moulded by such last words. Natures have been diverted into new and curious paths. So it was now. For the future Mr.

Ardagh's influence had no force over his daughter. An influence from the grave dominated her. Mr. Ardagh recognised the fact, shrugged his shoulders and travelled. His philosophy taught him to accept the inevitable with the fort.i.tude of the Stoic. From henceforward the Sirretts saw little of him. As to Mark, with his habitual tenderness he set about consoling his wife for her loss. He was kindness itself.

Catherine seemed grateful, was indeed grateful to him. Nevertheless, after the death of Mrs. Ardagh, something seemed to stand between her and her husband, dividing them. Mark did not know what this was. For some time he was unconscious of this thin veil dropped between them.

Even when he became aware of it he could not tell why it was there. He strove to put it aside, but in vain. Then he strove not to see it, not to think of it. He forgot it in his work. But Catherine always knew what set her apart from her husband. It was that influence from the grave. It was the memory of her mother's last words. She recognised them from the first, blindly, as words of prophecy. Yet the days went by. "William Foster" sat in his study in the Surrey home once more, while the spring grew, imitative of last year's spring. And there was no sign from G.o.d.

Catherine never doubted that the dying woman had been inspired. She never doubted that "William Foster" would be stayed, however tragically, from working fresh evil in the world. Indeed she waited, as one a.s.sured of some particular future, breathless in expectation of its approach.

Sometimes she strove to picture precisely what it might be, and, fancifully, she set two men before her--Mark and "William Foster." Even in real life they seemed two different men. Why not in the life of the imagination? And that was sweeter, for then she could look forward to the one standing fast, to the other being stricken. Might not his genius die in a man while the man lived on? There had been instances of men who had written one or two brilliant books and had seemed to exhaust themselves in that effort. And she dreamed of her husband's gift being stolen from him--divinely--of the stranger being slain. Yet this dreaming was idle and fantastic, the image which greets closed eyes. For Mark's energy and enthusiasm were growing. The fury of the papers fed him. The cries of pious fear emboldened his dogged and dreary talent.

His genius grew darker as its darkness became recognised.

This third book of his promised to be more powerful, more deadly, than either of its forerunners. He did not speak much of it to Catherine. But now and then, carried away by excitement and by the need of sympathy, he dropped a hint of what he was doing. She listened attentively but said little. Mark noticed her lack of responsiveness, and one night he said rather bitterly,

"You no longer care for your husband's achievements, Catherine."