A few hours after a telegram was handed to
me. It contained four words: "_Come at once.--Maurice._" "So
mother is dying," I muttered to myself, and I stood at gaze,
foreseeing myself taken into her room by a nurse and given a chair by
the bedside, foreseeing a hand lying outside the bed which I should
have to hold until I heard the death-rattle and saw her face become
quiet for ever.
This was my first vision, but in the midst of my packing, I remembered
that mother might linger for days. The dear friend who lies in the
church-yard under the downs lingered for weeks; every day her husband
and her children saw her dying under their eyes: why should not this
misfortune be mine? I know not to what God, but I prayed all night in
the train, and on board the boat; I got into the train at the
Broadstone praying. It is impossible, at least for me, to find words
to express adequately the agony of mind I endured on that journey.
Words can only hint at it, but I think that any one possessed of any
experience of life, or who has any gift of imagination, will be able
to guess at the terror that haunted me--terror of what?--not so much
that my mother might die, nor hope that she might live, but just that
I might arrive in time to see her die.
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