“Will she suffer any more?”

On the upper landing of the hotel in which Falconer had found Julian, Clemence was standing, one hand resting on the handle of a door which she had just closed behind her, looking in the uncertain light of a flickering gas-jet into the face of the man to whom she spoke. He was a quick, capable-looking man, with a brisk, professional manner, evidently a doctor. Clemence’s face was pale and tired, as though with strain or watching, and her low voice shook a little. The doctor was drawing on his left-hand glove, and he paused to answer her.

“I should say that she would not,” he said. “It is practically over.” He gave a keen, rather curious look at Clemence and then added: “You are alone with the lady?”

“Yes,” said Clemence simply.

A long night and a long day had passed, and between Mrs. Romayne and the one absorbing passion of her life had fallen that solemn shadow before which all earthly passions pale and fade away; that solemn shadow before whose creeping touch not strength of will, not love itself, can stand. As she fell to the ground before her son she had loosed her hold perforce on all the struggle and burning resolution which was life to her; she had followed the guide whom none may resist into that valley through which every one must pass, and its mists had lifted from her no more. From that one long faint she had been brought back only to fall into another; in such total unconsciousness, which had yielded twice to intervals of physical pain terrible to see, the long hours had passed.

And in one of these spaces of blank unconsciousness Julian Romayne had seen his mother for the last time. The necessity for his departure was pressing and relentless. The meeting of the shareholders was imminent, and that meeting he must face. He had left his mother’s room in the grey light of the early morning with a look on his face which Clemence, the only witness of that mute parting, never forgot; and he had gone away with Dennis Falconer to make those preparations for his surrender of himself to justice which were not to be delayed.

And now the day was drawing to a close. The doctor had paid his last visit, and the night was drawing on.

There was a moment’s pause after Clemence’s words. Then the doctor wished her a professional good-night, and, as he went downstairs, she turned and went back into the room.

It was a small room, the best which the hotel cared to place at the disposal of sudden illness, but somewhat dingy and ill-appointed. The gaslight, shaded from the face upon the bed, but shedding a garish light upon the rest of the room, touched nothing luxurious, nothing which its present occupant could have realised in connection with herself. Her very rings lying upon the dressing-table and flashing under the gaslight, seemed to protest against such poor surroundings.

But the figure on the bed lay motionless, protesting never more. It lay in blank unconsciousness even when Clemence, crossing the room, stood for a moment looking down, her whole face tender and quivering, and then sank gently on her knees and pressed her lips, with a womanly gesture of infinite pity, to the pale, inanimate hand upon the bed. It was over now, practically, as the doctor, looking at that waning life from a purely physical point of view, had said—all the struggle and the dread, all the courage and the hope, the valiant ignorance of twenty years. And the face upon the pillow was the face of the vanquished—the face of one whose last vivid consciousness of earthly things had been the consciousness of failure.

For many minutes Clemence knelt there, all the feeling of her woman’s soul seeming to expend itself in that soft, mute pressure. Then she rose quietly and moved across the room to make some final preparation for the night. That done, she came back again to the bedside, and doing so she started. The shadowy hands were moving feebly upon the counterpane. From out the grey, pinched face upon the pillow two glazed blue eyes were looking with a restless, searching movement as though in want of something. They rested upon Clemence with no recognition in them; but as her son’s wife drew nearer to her quickly and gently, Mrs. Romayne moved feebly and tried to turn her head upon the pillow, as though moved by some vague, indefinite, and far-away sense of dislike and repulsion. Her white lips moved uncertainly as she did so, and faint sounds came from between them. Clemence bent over her tenderly and tried to catch the words; and they grew gradually a little clearer.

“My boy!” the faint, uncertain voice muttered, “my little boy!”

A great wave of pity and yearning swept over Clemence, and she sank once more to her knees, fixing her eyes on the poor, worn face. Was it of any use to speak? Could her voice reach to those dim lands where the mother groped for her “little boy”?

“He will come!” she said. “He will come—by-and-by!”

As though the voice had roused her without penetrating to her brain, Mrs. Romayne moved again—that slight, feeble movement so eloquent of the extremity of weakness. Her eyes turned to Clemence with that glance of vague, unrecognising dislike.

“No,” she said, as though answering her—“no, he’s too little.” She paused, and again there was that groping movement of her hands. “His letter,” she muttered, “his letter! My dear mamma! my dear mamma!”

There was a restless distress in the glazed eyes now, and their glance tore Clemence’s heart. The feeble hands were moving painfully, and as she watched, with her tears falling fast in her impotent pity and longing to satisfy their craving, something in their movements, all unmeaning as they seemed at first, penetrated to Clemence’s understanding with one of those strange flashes of comprehension only possible under so tense a strain of sympathy. Those nerveless hands were feeling for a pocket! In an instant Clemence had risen, crossed the room, and put her hand into the pocket of the dress which Mrs. Romayne had worn. Her finger touched a paper, and she drew it out instantly. She saw that it was yellow and faded with age, and she moved quickly back with it to the bedside. The hands and the eyes were still moving, but the muttered words were audible no longer, and as Clemence put the paper gently between the thin fingers, she felt with a sudden thrill of awe that they were growing cold.

But the touch seemed to rouse Mrs. Romayne once more. Her fingers closed on the paper as if instinctively, and the restless distress died out of her eyes as she tried—vainly—to unfold the paper. Clemence put out her hand gently, and did the work for which the dying fingers had no strength, and on the dying face there dawned a pale, shadowy smile.

“Yes!” she said. “Yes! ‘My dear mamma!’ My dear mamma! Your loving—son—Julian!”

And with her son’s name on her lips, Mrs. Romayne left him behind, and passed from ignorance to knowledge.

The trial and conviction of Julian Romayne were a nine days’ wonder in society. The people who had most readily and carelessly received the widow and son of William Romayne, asked one another with the martyred air of those whose charity has been abused and their feelings for morality outraged, what was to be expected after all of the son of such a father? The people whose feelings for morality had been outraged at the outset by Mrs. Romayne’s reappearance in London, and soothed subsequently by the simplicity of the position, observed sagely that they had always said so. Both parties were unanimous in the assertion that the young man’s life was practically at an end. He had forfeited his place in society for ever.

But Julian himself realised gradually and painfully during the years of his punishment; with the strength of a manhood attained through pain, when he went away to a new country with his wife and child; that his life had just begun.

THE END

F. M. EVANS & CO., LIMITED, PRINTERS, CRYSTAL PALACE, S.E.

January, 1894.