Part 66 (2/2)
”Being stronger this morning, he has been propped up in bed writing a letter. When he called for the pens and paper I asked if I couldn't write it for him, but the old darling made a great mystery of the matter, and looked artful, and asked if it was usual to fight your enemy with his own powder and shot. Of course I humoured him and pretended to be mighty curious, though I think I know who the letter was written to, all the same that he kept the address side of the envelope hidden even when the front of it was being sealed. He sealed it with sealing-wax, and I held the candle while he did so, with his poor trembling fingers in danger from the light, and then I stamped it with my mother's pearl ring, and he smuggled it under the pillow.
”Since breakfast he has shown an increased inclination to doze, but there have been visits from the wardens and from neighbouring parsons, for a _loc.u.m tenens_ has had to be appointed. Of course, they have all inquired where his pain is, and on being told that he has none, they have gone downstairs cackling and clucking and crowing in various versions of 'Praise G.o.d for that!' I hate people who are always singing the doxology.
”Noon.--Condition unchanged, except that in the intervals of drowsiness his mind has wandered a little. He appears to live in the past. Looking at me with conscious eyes, he calls me 'Lancelot'--my father's name.
It has been so all the morning. One would think he was walking in a twilight land where he mistakes people's faces and the dead are as much alive as the living.
”They all think I am brave, oh, so brave! because I do not cry now, as everybody else does--even Aunt Anna behind her ap.r.o.n--although my tears can flow so easily, and at other times I keep them constantly on tap. But I am really afraid, and down at the bottom of my heart I am terrified. It is just as if _something_ were coming into the house slowly, irresistibly, awfully, and casting its shadow on the floor already.
”I have found out the cause of his outcries in the night. Aunt Rachel says he was dreaming of my father's departure for Africa. That was twenty-two years ago, but it seems that the memory of the last day has troubled him a good deal lately. 'Don't you remember it?' he has been saying. 'There were no railways in the island then, and we stood at the gate to watch the coach that was taking him away. He sat on the top and waved his red handkerchief. And when he had gone, and it was no use watching, we turned back to the house--you and Anna and poor, pretty young Elise. He never came back, and when Glory goes again she'll never come back either.'
”In the intervals of his semi-consciousness, when he mistakes me for my father, my wonderful bravery often fails me, and I find excuses for going out of the room. Then I creep noiselessly through the house and listen at half-open doors. Just now I heard him talking quite rationally to Rachel, but in a voice that seemed to speak inwardly, not outwardly, as before. 'She can't help it, poor child!' he said. 'Some day she'll know what it is, but not yet, not until she has a child of her own. The race looks forward, not backward. G.o.d knew when he created us that the world couldn't go on without that bit of cruelty, and who am I that I should complain?'
”I couldn't bear it any longer, and with a pain at my heart I ran in and cried, 'I'll never leave you, grandfather.' But he only smiled and said, 'I'll not be keeping you long, Glory, I'll not be keeping you long,' and then I could have died for shame.
”Evening.--All afternoon he has been like a child, and everything present to his consciousness seems to have been reversed. The shadow of eternity appears to have wiped out time. When I have raised him up in bed he has delighted to think he was a little boy in his young mother's arms. Oh, sweet dream! The old man with his furrowed forehead and beautiful white head and all the heavy years rolled back! More than once he has asked me if he may play till bedtime, and I have stroked his wrinkled hands and told him 'Yes,' for I pretend to be his mother, who died, when she was old.
”But the 'part' is almost too much for me, and, lest I should break down under the strain of it, I am going out of his room constantly. I have just been into his study. It is as full as ever of his squeezes and rubbings and plaster casts and dusty old runes. He has spent all his life away back in the tenth century, and now he is going farther, farther....
”Oh, I'm aweary, aweary! If anything happens to grandfather I shall soon leave this place; there will be nothing to hold me here any longer, and besides I could not bear the sight of these evidences of his gentle presence, so simple, so touching. But what a vain thing London is with all its vast ado--how little, how pitiful!
”Later.--It is all over! The curtain has fallen, and I am not crying.
If I did cry it would not be from grief, but because the end was so beautiful, so glorious! It was at sunset, and the streamers of the sun were coming horizontally into the room. He awoke from a long drowsiness, and a serenity almost angelic overspread his face. I could see that he was himself once again. Death had led him back through the long years since he was a child, and he knew he was an old man and I a young woman.
'Have the boats gone yet?' he asked, meaning the herring boats that go at sunset. I looked out and told him they were at the point of going.
'Let me see them sail,' he said, so I slipped my arms about him and raised him until he was sitting up and could see down the length of the harbour and past the castle to the sea. The reflection of the sunlight was about his silvery old head, and over the damps and chills of death it made a radiance on his face like a light from heaven. There was hardly a breeze, and the boats were dropping down from their berths with their brown sails half set. 'Ah,' he said, 'it's the other way with me, Glory. I'm coming in, not going out. I've been beating to windward all my life, but I see the harbour on my lee-bow at last as plainly as I ever saw Peel, and now I'm only waiting for the top of the tide and the master of the port to run up the flag!'
”Then his head fell gently back on my arm and his lips changed colour, but his eyes did not close, and over his saintly face there pa.s.sed a fleeting smile. Thus died a Christian gentleman--a simple, sunny, merry, happy, childlike creature, and of such are the kingdom of heaven.
”Glory.”
_Parson Quayle's Letter._
”Dear John: Before this letter reaches you, or perhaps along with it, you will receive the news that tells you what it is. I am 'in,' John; I can say no more than that. The doctor tells me it may be now or then or at any time. But I am looking for my enlargement soon, and whether it comes to-morrow sunset or with to-day's next tide I leave myself in His hands in whose hands we all are. Well has the wise man said, 'The day of our death is better than the day of our birth, so with all good will, and what legacy of strength old age has left to me, I send you my last word and message.
”My poor old daughters are sorely stricken, but Glory is still brave and true, being, as she always was, a quivering bow of steel. People tell me that the poor mother is strong in the girl, and the spirit of the mother's race; but well I know the father's stalwart soul supports her; and I pray G.o.d that when my dark hour comes her loving and courageous arms may be around me.
”That brings me to the object of my letter. This living will soon be vacant, and I am wondering who will follow in my feeble steps. It is a sweet spot, John! The old church does not look so ill when the sun s.h.i.+nes on it, and in the summer-time this old garden is full of fruit and flowers. Did I ever tell you that Glory was born here? I never had another grandchild, and we were great comrades from the first. She was a wise and winsome little thing, and I was only an old child myself, so we had many a run and romp in these grounds together. When I try to think of the place without her it is a vain effort and a painful one; and even while she was away in your great and wicked Babylon, with its dangers and temptations, her little ghost seemed to lurk at the back of every bush and tree, and sometimes it would leap out on me and laugh.
”It is months since I saw your father, but they tell me he has lately burned his bureau, making one vast bonfire of the gatherings of twenty years. That is not such ill news either; and maybe, now the great ado that worked such woe is put by and gone, he would rejoice to see you back at home, and open his hungering arms to you.
”But my eyes ache and my pen is shaking. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
An old man leaves you his blessing, John. G.o.d grant that in his own good time we may meet in a blessed paradise, rejoicing in his gracious mercy, and all our sins forgiven!
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