The Consul-General continued to sit with his head down, listening to the old lady and saying nothing, yet seeing the scene as she depicted it and feeling again the tingling pride which he, too, had felt that night but permitted nobody to know.
After a moment the beaming face on the bed became clouded over, as if that memory had brought other memories less easy to bear – dreams of happy days to come, of honours and of children.
"Ah well, God knows best," she said in a tremulous voice, releasing the Consul-General's hand.
The old man felt as if he would have to hurry out of the room without uttering another word, but, as well as he could, he controlled himself and said —
"You are agitating yourself, Janet. You must lie quiet now."
"Yes, I must lie quiet now, and think of … of other things," she answered.
He was stepping away when she called on him to turn her on her right side, for that was how she always slept, and upon the Egyptian nurse coming hurrying up to help, she said —
"No, no, not you, Fatimah – his lordship."
Then the Consul-General put his arms about her – feeling how thin and wasted she was, and how little of her was left to die – and turning her gently round he laid her back on the pillow which Fatimah had in the meantime shaken out.
While he did so her dim eyes brightened again, and stretching her white hands out of her silk nightdress she clasped them about his neck, with the last tender efforts of the woman who wanted to be fondled to the end.
The strain of talking had been too much for her, and after a few minutes she sank into a restless doze, in which the perspiration broke out on her forehead and her face acquired an expression of pain, for sleep knows no pretences. But at length her features became more composed and her breathing more regular, and then the Consul-General, who had been standing aside, mute with anguish, said in a low tone to Fatimah —
"She is sleeping quietly now," and then he turned to go.
Fatimah followed him to the head of the stairs and said in a husky whisper —
"It will be all over to-night, though – you'll see it will."
For a moment he looked steadfastly into the woman's eyes, and then, without answering her, walked heavily down the stairs.
Back in the library, he stood for some time with his face to the empty fireplace. Over the mantelpiece there hung a little picture, in a black-and-gilt frame, of a bright-faced boy in an Arab fez. It was more than he could do to look at that portrait now, so he took it off its nail and laid it, face down, on the marble mantel-shelf.
Just at that moment one of his secretaries brought in a despatch. It was the despatch from the Sirdar, sent in cypher but now written out at length. The Consul-General read it without any apparent emotion and put it aside without a word.
The hours passed slowly; the night was very long; the old man did not go to bed. Not for the first time, he was asking himself searching questions about the mystery of life and death, but the great enigma was still baffling him. Could it be possible that while he had occupied himself with the mere shows and semblance of things, calling them by great names – Civilisation and Progress – that simple soul upstairs had been grasping the eternal realities?
There were questions that cut deeper even than that, and now they faced him one by one. Was it true that he had married merely in the hope of having some one to carry on his name and thus fulfil the aspirations of his pride? Had he for nearly forty years locked his heart away from the woman who had been starving for his love, and was it only by the loss of the son who was to have been the crown of his life that they were brought together in the end?
Thus the hoofs of the dark hours beat heavily on the great Proconsul's brain, and in the awful light that came to him from an open grave, the triumphs of the life behind him looked poor and small.
But meantime the palpitating air of the room upstairs was full of a different spirit. The old lady had apparently awakened from her restless sleep, for she had opened her eyes and was talking in a bright and happy voice. Her cheeks were tinged with the glow of health, and her whole face was filled with light.
"I knew I should see them," she said.
"See whom, my heart?" asked Fatimah, but without answering her, the old lady, with the same rapturous expression, went on talking.
"I knew I should, and I have! I have seen both of them!"
"Whom have you seen, my lady?" asked Fatimah again, but once more the dying woman paid no heed to her.
"I saw them as plainly as I see you now, dear. It was in a place I did not know. The sun was so hot, and the room was so close. There was a rush roof and divans all round the walls. But Gordon and Helena were there together, sitting at opposite sides of a table and holding each other's hands."
"Allah! Allah!" muttered Fatimah, with upraised hands.
The old lady seemed to hear her, for an indulgent smile passed over her radiant face and she said in a tone of tender remonstrance —
"Don't be foolish, Fatimah! Of course I saw him. The Lord said I should, and He never breaks His promises. 'Help me, O God, for Christ's sake,' I said. 'Shall I see my dear son again? O God, give me a sign.' And He did! Yes, it was in the middle of the night. 'Janet,' said a voice, and I was not afraid. 'Be patient, Janet. You shall see your dear boy before you die.'"
Her face was full of happy visions. The life of this world seemed to be no longer there. A kind of life from the other world appeared to reanimate the sinking woman. The near approach of eternity illumined her whole being with a supernatural light. She was dying in a flood of joy.
"Oh, how good the Lord is! It is so easy to go now! … John, you must not think I suffer any longer, because I don't. I have no pain now, dear – none whatever."
Then she clasped her wasted hands together in the attitude of prayer and said in a rustling whisper —
"To-night, Lord Jesus! Let it be to-night!"
After that her rapturous voice died away and her ecstatic eyes gently closed, but an ineffable smile continued to play on her faintly-tinted face, as if she were looking on the wings that were waiting to bear her away.
The doctor came in at that moment, and was told what had occurred.
"Delirium, of course," he said. A change had come; the crisis was approaching. If the same thing happened at the supreme moment the patient was not to be contradicted; her delusion was to be indulged.
It did not happen.
In the early hours of the morning the Consul-General was called upstairs. There was a deep silence in the bedroom, as if the air had suddenly become empty and void. The day was breaking, and through the windows that looked over to the Nile the white sails of a line of boats gliding by seemed like the passing of angels' wings. Sparrows were twittering in the eaves, and through the windows to the east the first streamers of the sunrise were rising in the sky.
The Consul-General approached the bed and looked down at the pallid face on the pillow. He wanted to stoop and kiss it, but he felt as if it would be a profanation to do so now. His own face was full of suffering, for the sealed chambers of his iron soul had been broken open at last.
With his hands clasped behind his back he stood for some minutes quite motionless. Then laying one hand on the brass head-rail of the bed, he leaned over his dead wife and spoke to her as if she could hear.
"Forgive me, Janet! Forgive me!" he said in a low voice that was like a sob.
Did she hear him? Who can say she did not? Was it only a ray from the sunrise that made the Egyptian woman think that over the dead face of the careworn and weary one, whose sweet soul was even then winging its way to heaven, there passed the light of a loving smile?
CHAPTER XVII
Within three days the softening effects on the Consul-General of Lady Nuneham's death were lost. Out