'His hands are on me: he's feeling my face to feel if I'm dead!'
The match flared up. As I carried it to the candle, I looked round, and noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the further corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through glass panes at the top. When I tried this door, it was locked on the inside, and the room beyond was dark.
Dark and silent. But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and silence? Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in obscurity?— Doubt? There was none on that point, none on any other. Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the bedside, with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of an evil spirit in the chamber of death.
He was waiting secretly in the house—waiting for her last moments; listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence! I placed myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at any hazard, from the bedside. How long I remained absorbed in watching before the darkness of the inner room, I know not—but some time must have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my attention. I turned towards Margaret; and, in an instant, all previous thoughts were suspended in my mind, by the sight that now met my eyes.
She had altered completely. Her hands, so restless hitherto, lay quite still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of her face had changed—the fever-traces remained on every feature, and yet the fever-look was gone. Her eyes were almost closed; her quick breathing had grown calm and slow. I touched her pulse; it was beating with a wayward, fluttering gentleness. What did this striking alteration indicate? Recovery? Was it possible? As the idea crossed my mind, every one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation of watching her face; I could not have stirred an instant from the bed, for worlds.
The earliest dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before another change appeared—before she drew a long, sighing breath, and slowly opened her eyes on mine. Their first look was very strange and startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always been in the past time. It lasted only for a moment. She recognised me; and, instantly, an expression of anguish and shame flew over the first terror and surprise of her face. She struggled vainly to lift her hands—so busy all through the night; so idle now! A faint moan of supplication breathed from her lips; and she slowly turned her head on the pillow, so as to hide her face from my sight.
'Oh, my God! my God!' she murmured, in low, wailing tones, 'I've broken his heart, and he still comes here to be kind to me! This is worse than death! I'm too bad to be forgiven—leave me! leave me!—oh, Basil, leave me to die!'
I spoke to her; but desisted almost immediately—desisted even from uttering her name. At the mere sound of my voice, her suffering rose to agony; the wild despair of the soul wrestling awfully with the writhing weakness of the body, uttered itself in words and cries horrible, beyond all imagination, to hear. I sank down on my knees by the bedside; the strength which had sustained me for hours, gave way in an instant, and I burst into a passion of tears, as my spirit poured from my lips in supplication for hers—tears that did not humiliate me; for I knew, while I shed them, that I had forgiven her!
The dawn brightened. Gradually, as the fair light of the new day flowed in lovely upon her bed; as the fresh morning breeze lifted tenderly and playfully the scattered locks of her hair that lay over the pillow—so, the calmness began to come back to her voice and the stillness of repose to her limbs. But she never turned her face to me again; never, when the wild words of her despair grew fewer and fainter; never, when the last faint supplication to me, to leave her to die forsaken as she deserved, ended mournfully in a long, moaning gasp for breath. I waited after this—waited a long time—then spoke to her softly—then waited once more; hearing her still breathe, but slowly and more slowly with every minute—then spoke to her for the second time, louder than before. She never answered, and never moved. Was she sleeping? I could not tell. Some influence seemed to hold me back from going to the other side of the bed, to look at her face, as it lay away from me, almost hidden in the pillow.
The light strengthened faster, and grew mellow with the clear beauty of the morning sunshine. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps advancing along the street; they stopped under the window: and a voice which I recognized, called me by my name. I looked out: Mr. Bernard had returned at last.
'I could not get back sooner,' he said; 'the case was desperate, and I was afraid to leave it. You will find a key on the chimney-piece—throw it out to me, and I can let myself in; I told them not to bolt the door before I went out.'
I obeyed his directions. When he entered the room, I thought Margaret moved a little, and signed to him with my hand to make no noise. He looked towards the bed without any appearance of surprise, and asked me in a whisper when the change had come over her, and how. I told him very briefly, and inquired whether he had known of such changes in other cases, like hers.
'Many,' he answered, 'many changes just as extraordinary, which have raised hopes that I never knew realised. Expect the worst from the change you have witnessed; it is a fatal sign.'
Still, in spite of what he said, it seemed as if he feared to wake her; for he spoke in his lowest tones, and walked very softly when he went close to the bedside.
He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to feel her pulse, and looked in the direction of the glass door— listened attentively—and said, as if to himself—'I thought I heard some one moving in that room, but I suppose I am mistaken; nobody can be up in the house yet.' With those words he looked down at Margaret, and gently parted back her hair from her forehead.
'Don't disturb her,' I whispered, 'she is asleep; surely she is asleep!'
He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart. Then softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.
'Yes, she is asleep,' he said gravely; 'asleep, never to wake again. She is dead.'
I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment, were not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.
'This has been a sad scene for any one at your age,' he resumed kindly, as he left the bedside, 'but you have borne it well. I am glad to see that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial.'
Calmly?
Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could remember that I had forgiven her.
VIII.
