The noise of the window closing rang over all the silent Loch and silent heavens, and went echoing, echoing away into the hollows of the hills. It struck the man in his despair like the thunder of dissolving earth and Heaven.
The death of Margaret Diarmid had been, as people say, sudden at the last. Whether the agitation of that visit had been too much for her, or if Nature at the end, having lingered so long, had succumbed in a moment to some unseen touch, it was impossible to tell. She was dead--that was all that could be said. Things had gone on as usual all the evening through in the dim parlour, where Jean came in from time to time to see that all was safe, and Isabel moved softly about at the appointed hours with her cordials and her medicines. Margaret had been lying, as her stepmother had left her, with her large, humid, wistful eyes fixed, taking less notice of everything around than usual, looking out, as it were, into an unseen world of her own. An intense quietness had fallen upon the house. The children had been sent early to bed; and Jenny Spence, who had volunteered to assist in the watch, was comfortably installed in the big elbow-chair by the fire in the kitchen. ‘We’re better without her,’ Jean had whispered to Isabel; ‘but it’s a real pleasure to her, and she’s a connection; and she’ll no disturb Margaret.’ Jean herself had taken up her position, wrapt in her cloak, just within the parlour door. It was usual for them, at an earlier hour than this, to remove their patient to bed. But Margaret had been so still that they had hesitated to disturb her. ‘By and by,’ she had said to them softly, as she lay there with her white face upturned, and her open eyes. She was not asleep; but so quiet, so smiling, breathing so calmly. Could it be that she had taken ‘a good turn?’ Isabel, seated at the foot of the sofa, her duties over for the moment, kept her watch, praying mechanically, dozing by moments, stupified by grief and weariness. Jean behind backs saw nothing of what was passing. But after a time the stillness became intolerable, and weighed upon her. Her first impulse was to steal out to the kitchen and rouse Jenny Spence, and console herself with a melancholy talk over the fire; and then she bethought herself that it would be cruel to leave Isabel in this atmosphere, which somehow seemed all at once so strangely chilled and silent. Listening intently, it seemed to her that she heard no breathing but her own. Margaret’s hardest paroxysms would have sounded natural and consoling in place of that awful stillness. Jean’s heart began to throb in her ears, and her eyes to dazzle. It was some time before she could move. When she at last summoned her powers and roused herself, it was all clear to her in a moment. The strange silence, the sudden chill, had been death; but thus the long illness, which all the parish expected was to have a triumphant and victorious conclusion, ended softly in the silence, without sound of trumpet or demonstration of exceeding joy.