Then she went up to bed--a stricken ruin of the woman who
had risen from it in the morning. Her husband still slept, and Thomasin,
her grief being of a nature which required spectators for its fullest and
most soothing expression, felt irritated alike with him and with those
friends who had all departed, and, from the best motives, left her thus.
She flung herself into bed and anger obscured her misery--anger with her
husband. His heavy breathing worked her to a frenzy at last, and she sat
up, took him by the shoulder and tried to shake him.
"Wake up, for God's sake, an' speak to me, caan't 'e? You eat an' drink an'
sleep like a gert hog--you new--come from your awnly son's drownin'! Oh,
Christ, caan't 'e think o' me, as have lived a hunderd cruel years since
you went to sleep? Ain't you got a word for me? An' you, as had your sawl
centered 'pon en--how comes it you can--"
She stopped abruptly, for he lay motionless and made no sort of response to
her shrill complaining. She had yet to learn the cause; she had yet to know
that Michael had drifted beyond the reach of all further mental suffering
whatsoever. No religious anxieties, no mundane trials, none of the million
lesser carking troubles that fret the sane brain and stamp care on the face
of conscious intelligence would plague him more. Henceforth he was dead to
the changes and chances of human life.
At midnight there came the awful waking.
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