Once again the little lips moved.
"He is calling me," said Mercy, listening intently; and she grew restless and excited. "He is going away. I can hear him. He is far off.
Ralphie, Ralphie!" She had lifted the child up to her face. "Ralphie, Ralphie!" she cried.
"Give me the baby, Mercy," said Greta.
But the mother clung to it with a convulsive grasp.
"Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!..."
There was a sudden flash of some white thing. In an instant the bandage had fallen from Mercy"s head, and she was peering down into the child"s face with wild eyes.
"Ralphie, Ralphie!... Hugh!" she cried.
The mother had seen her babe at last, and in that instant she had recognized the features of its father.
At the next moment the angel of G.o.d pa.s.sed through that troubled house, and the child lay dead at the mother"s breast.
Mercy saw it all, and her impa.s.sioned mood left her. She rose to her feet quietly, and laid the little one in the bed. There was never a sigh more, never a tear. Only her face was ashy pale, and her whitening lips quivered.
"Greta," she said, very slowly, "will you go for him?"
Greta kissed the girl"s forehead tenderly. Her own calm, steadfast, enduring spirit sunk. All the world was dead to her now.
"Yes, dear," she whispered.
The next minute she was gone from the room.
CHAPTER IX.
The evening was closing in; now and then the shrill cries of the birds pealed and echoed in the still air; a long, fibrous streak of silver in the sky ebbed away over the head of Hindscarth. Greta hastened toward the pit-brow. The clank of the iron chain in the gear told that the cage in the shaft was working.
It was a year and a half since her life had first been overshadowed by a disaster more black and terrible than death itself, and never for an instant had the clouds been lifted until three days ago. Then, in a moment, the light had pierced through the empty sky, and a way had been wrought for her out of the labyrinth of misery. But even that pa.s.sage for life and hope and love seemed now to be closed by the grim countenance of doom.
Mercy would be blind forever! All was over and done. Greta"s strong, calm spirit sunk and sunk. She saw the impostor holding to the end the name and place of the good man; and she saw the good man dragging his toilsome way through life--an outcast, a by-word, loaded with ignominy, branded with crime. And that unhappy man was her husband, and he had no stay but in her love--no hope but in her faith.
Greta stopped at the door of Hugh Ritson"s office and knocked. A moment later he and she were face to face. He was dressed in his pit flannels, and was standing by a table on which a lamp burned. When he recognized her, he pa.s.sed one hand across his brow, the other he rested on the mantel-piece. There was a momentary twitching of her lips, and he involuntarily remarked that in the time that had pa.s.sed since they last met she had grown thinner.
"Come with me," she said in a trembling whisper. "Mercy"s child is dead, and the poor girl is asking for you in her great trouble."
He did not speak at once, but shaded his eyes from the lamp. Then he said, in a voice unlike his own:
"I will follow you."
She had held the door in her hand, and now she turned to go. He took one step toward her.
"Greta, have you nothing more to say to me?" he asked.
"What do you wish me to say?"
He did not answer; his eyes fell before her.
There was a slight wave of her hand as she added:
"The same room ought never to contain both you and me--it never should have done so--but this is not my errand."
"I have deserved it," he said, humbly.
"The cruel work is done--yes, done past undoing. You have not heard the last of it. Then, since you ask me what I have to say to you, it is this: That man, that instrument of your malice who is now your master, has been to say that he can compel me to live with him, or imprison me if I refuse. Can he do it?"
Hugh Ritson lifted his eyes with a blind, vacant stare.
"To live with him? Him? You to live with him?" he said, absently.
"To live under his roof--those were his words. Can he do it? I mean if the law recognizes him as my husband?"
Hugh Ritson"s eyes wandered.
"Do it? Your husband?" he echoed, incoherently.
"I know well what he wants," said Greta, breathing heavily; "it is not myself he is anxious for--but he can not have the one without the other."
"The one without the other?" echoed Hugh Ritson in a low tone. Then he strode across the room in visible agitation.
"Greta, that man is--. Do you know who he is?"
"Paul Drayton, the innkeeper of Hendon," she answered, calmly.
"No, no; he is your--"
He paused, his brows knit, his fingers interlaced. Her bosom swelled.
"Would you tell me that he is my husband?" she said indignantly.
Hugh Ritson again pa.s.sed his hand across his brow.
"Greta, I have deserved your distrust," he said, in an altered tone.
"What is done can never be undone," she answered.
His voice had regained its calmness, but his manner was still agitated.
"I may serve you even yet," he said; "I have done you too much wrong; I know that."
"What is your remorse worth now?" she asked. "It comes too late."