Meredith died the next day, after a struggle longer and harder than
could have been anticipated, and very differently from the manner in
which, when he dictated his last message to the world, he expected to
die. Few human creatures are strong enough, except in books, to march
thus solemnly and statelily to the edge of the grave. The last event
itself was twenty-four hours later than the anxious watchers expected
it to be, and wore them all out more utterly than any previous part of
their patient’s lingering illness. He dictated his postscript, lying in
great exhaustion, but solemn calm, not without a certain pomp of
conscious grandeur, victorious over death and the grave. “That great
angel whom men call the last enemy is standing by my bedside,” the dying
man said, giving forth his last utterance slowly word by word. “In an
hour I shall be clay and ashes. I send you, friends, this last message.
Death is not terrible to those who love Christ. I feel a strength in me
that is not my own. I had fears and doubts, but I have them no longer.
The gates of heaven are opening. I close my eyes, for I can no longer
see the lights of this world; when I open them again it will be to
behold the face of my Lord. Amen. This I say to all the world with my
last breath. For those who love Christ it is not hard to die.”
Colin, who wrote the words, trembled over them with a weakness like a
woman’s; but Meredith’s broken and interrupted voice was shaken only by
the last pangs of mortality, not by any faltering of the spirit. “I tell
you, Colin, it is not hard,” he said, and smiled upon his friend, and
composed himself to meet the last encounter; but such was not the end.
The long night lingered on, and the dying man dozed a little, and woke
again less dignified and composed. Then came the weary morning, with its
dreadful daylight which made the heart sick, and then a long day of
dying, terrible to behold, perhaps not so hard to bear. The two who were
his brothers at this dreadful moment exercised all their power to keep
Alice out of the room where this struggle was going on, but the gentle
little girl was a faithful woman, and kept her place. He had had his
moment of conscious victory, but now in its turn the human soul was
vanquished. He became unconscious of their consoling presence, conscious
of nothing but the awful restlessness, the intolerable languor and yet
more intolerable nervous strength which kept him alive in spite of
himself; and then the veiled and abstracted spirit awoke to matters of
which, when in full possession of his faculties, Arthur had made no
mention. He began to murmur strange words as he lay tossing in that last
struggle. “Tell my father,” he said once or twice, but never finished
the message. That death so clear and conscious, for which he had hoped,
was not granted to him; and, when at last the deliverance came, even
Alice, on her knees by the bedside, felt in her desolation a moment’s
relief. It was almost dawn of the second morning when they raised her
up and led her tenderly away to Sora Antonia, the kind Italian woman,
who waited outside. Colin was scarcely less overwhelmed than she. The
young man sank down by the table where, on the previous night, he had
been Arthur’s secretary, and almost fainting dropped his head upon the
book which still lay open there. Twenty-four hours only of additional
hard labour added on to the ending life; but it looked as many years to
the young inexperienced spirit which had thus, for the first time,
followed another, so far as a spectator can, through the valley of the
shadow of death.
Lauderdale, who knew better, and upon whose greater strength this
dreadful strain of watching had made a less visible impression, had to
do for Colin what the kind peasant woman was doing for the desolate
sister--to take him away from the chamber of death, and make him lie
down, and put aside altogether his own sensations on behalf of the
younger and more susceptible sufferer. All that had to be done fell on
Lauderdale; he made the necessary arrangements with a self-command which
nothing disturbed, and, when he could satisfy himself that both the
young worn-out creatures, who were his children for the moment, had got
the momentary solace of sleep, as was natural, he threw himself into
poor Arthur’s arm-chair and pondered with a troubled countenance on all
that might follow. There he too slept and dozed, as Sora Antonia went
softly to and fro, moved with pity. She had said her rosary for Arthur
many a morning, and had done all she could to interest in his behalf
that good St. Antonio of Padua, who was so charitable, and perhaps might
not be so particular about a matter of doctrine as St. Paul or St.
Peter; for Sora Antonia was kind to the bottom of her heart, and could
not bear to think of more than a thousand years or so of Purgatory for
the poor young heretic. “The Signorino was English and knew no better,”
she said to her patron saint--and comforted herself with the thought
that the blessed Antonio would not fail to attend to her recommendation,
and that she had done the best she could for her lodger. From the room
where Alice slept the deep sleep of exhaustion the good woman made many
voyages into the silent _salone_, where the shutters were closed upon
the bare windows, though the triumphant sun streamed in at every
crevice. She looked at Lauderdale, who dozed in the great chair, with
curious looks of speculation and inquiry. He looked old and grey, thus
sleeping in the daylight, and the traces of exhaustion in such a face as
his were less touching than the lines in Alice’s gentle countenance or
the fading of Colin’s brightness. He was the only member of the party
who looked responsible to the eyes of Sora Antonia; and already she had
a little romance in hand, and wondered much whether this uncle, or elder
brother, or guardian, would be favourable to her young people. Thus,
while the three watchers found a moment’s sad rest after their long
vigil, new hopes and thoughts of life already began to play about them
unawares. The world will not stand still even to see the act of death
accomplished; and the act of death itself, if Arthur was right in his
hopes, had not that already opened its brighter side upon the solitary
soul which had gone forth alone?
The day after everything was finally over was Sunday--the gayest and
brightest of summer festal days. Colin and Lauderdale, who had on the
day before carried their friend to his grave, met each other sadly at
the table, where it was so strange to take up again the common thread of
life as though Arthur Meredith had never had any share in it. It was
Sunday under its brightest aspect; the village was very gay outside, and
neither of them felt capable of introducing their sombre shadows into
the flowery and sunny festa, the gaiety of which jarred upon their
sadness; and they had no heart to go about their usual occupations
within. When they had swallowed their coffee together, they withdrew
from each other into different corners, and tried to read, which was the
only employment possible. Lauderdale, for his part, in his listlessness
and fatigue, went to rummage among some books which a former occupant
had left, and brought from among them--the strangest choice for him to
make--a French novel, a kind of production utterly unknown to him. The
chances are, he had forgotten it was Sunday; for his Scotch prejudices,
though he held them lightly in theory, still held him fast in practice.
When, however, he had pored over it vaguely for half an hour (for
reading French was a laborious amusement to the imperfectly instructed
scholar), Colin was roused out of studies which he, too, pursued with a
very divided attention, by a sudden noise, and saw the little yellow
volume spin through the air out of his friend’s vigorous fingers, and
drop ignominiously in a corner. “Me to be reading stuff like that!” said
Lauderdale, with grim accents of self disgust; “and him maybe near to
see what a fool is doing!” As he said this, he got up from his chair,
and began to pace about the quiet, lonely room, violently endeavouring
to recover the composure which he had not been able to preserve. Though
he was older and stronger than the others, watching and grief had told
upon his strength also; and, in the glory of the summer morning which
blazed all round and about, the soul of this wayfaring man grew sick
within him. Something like a sob sounded into the silence. “I’m no
asking if he’s happy,” Lauderdale burst forth; “I cannot feel as if I
would esteem him the same if he felt nothing but joy to get away. You’re
a’ infidels and unbelievers alike, with your happiness and your heaven.
I’m no saying that it’s less than the supreme joy to see the face he
hoped to see--but joy’s no inconsistent with pain. Will you tell me the
callant, having a heart as you know he had, can think of us mourning for
him and no care? Dinna speak of such inhuman imaginations to me.”
“No,” said Colin, softly. “But worst of all would be to think he was
here,” the young man continued, after a pause, “unable to communicate
with us anyhow, by whatsoever effort. Don’t think so, Lauderdale; that
is the most inhuman imagination of all.”
“I’m no so clear of that,” said the philosopher, subduing his hasty
steps; “nae doubt there would be a pang in it, especially when there was
information like that to bestow; but it’s hard to tell, in our leemited
condition, a’ the capabilities of a soul. It might be a friend close by,
and no yoursel’, that put your best thought in your head, though you saw
him not. I wouldna say that I would object to that. It’s all a question
of temperament, and, maybe, age,” he continued, calming himself entirely
down, and taking a seat beside Colin in the window. “The like of you
expects response, and has no conception of life without it; but the like
of me can be content without response,” said Colin’s guardian; and then
he regarded his companion with eyes in which the love was veiled by a
grave mist of meditation. “I would not object to take the charge of you
in such a manner,” he said, slowly. “But it’s awfu’ easy to dream
dreams,--if anything on this earth could but make a man _know_;”--and
then there followed another pause. “He was awfu’ pleased to teach,”
Lauderdale resumed, with an unsteady smile. “It’s strange to think what
should hinder him speaking now, when he has such news to tell. I never
could make it out, for my part. Whiles my mind inclines to the thought
that it must be a peaceable sleep that wraps them a’ till the great day,
which would account for the awfu’ silence; but there’s some things that
go against that. This is what makes me most indignant at thae idiots
with their spirit-rapping and gibberish. Does ony mortal with a heart
within his bosom dare to think that, if Love doesna open their sealed
lips, any power in the world can?” cried the philosopher, whose emotion
again got beyond his control. He got up again, and resumed his
melancholy march up and down the room. “It’s an awfu’ marvel, beyond my
reach,” he said, “when a word of communication would make a’ the
difference, why it’s no permitted--if it were but to keep a heart from
breaking here and there.”
“Perhaps it is our own fault,” said Colin; “perhaps flesh and blood
shrinks more than we are aware of from such a possibility; and
perhaps--” here the young man paused a little, “indeed, it is not
perhaps. Does not God Himself choose to be our comforter?” said the
youthful pre-destined priest; upon which the older and sadder man once
more composed himself with a groan.
“Ay,” said Lauderdale, “I can say nothing against that argument. I’m no
denying it’s the last and the greatest. I speak the voice of a man’s
yearning--but I’ve no intention of contravening the truth. He’s gone
like many a one before him. You and me must bide our time. I’ll say no
more of Arthur. The best thing you can do is to read a chapter. If we
canna hear of him direct, which is no to be hoped for, we can take as
good a grip as possible of the Friend that stands between us. It’s
little use trying to forget--or trying no to think and inquire and
question. There is but one thing in the world, so far as I can see, that
a man can feel a kind of sure of. Callant, read a chapter,” said
Lauderdale, with a long sigh. He threw himself back, as he spoke, in the
nearest chair, and Colin took his Bible dutifully to obey. The contrast
between this request, expressed as any Scotch peasant would have
expressed it, and the speculations which preceded it, did not startle
Colin, and he had opened the book by instinct in the latter part of St.
John’s Gospel, when he was disturbed by the entrance of Alice, who came
in softly from her room without any warning. Her long attendance on her
brother had withdrawn the colour from her cheeks and the fulness from
her figure so gradually, that it was only now in her mourning dress that
her companions saw how pale and thin she had grown. Alice was not
speculative, nor fanciful, nor addicted to undue exercise of the
faculties of her own mind in any way. She was a dutiful woman, young and
simple, and accepted God’s will without inquiry or remonstrance. Though
she had struggled long against the thought of Arthur’s death, now that
he _was_ dead she recognized and submitted to the event which it was no
longer possible to avert or change, with a tender and sweet resignation
of which some women are capable. A more forlorn and desolate creature
than Alice Meredith did not exist on the earth, to all ordinary
appearance, at this moment; but, as she was not at all thinking of
herself, that aspect of the case did not occur to her.
She came out of her room very softly, with a faint smile on her face,
holding some Prayer-books in her hands. Up to this sad day it had been
their custom to read prayers together on the Sundays, being too far off
Rome to make it practicable even for the stronger members of the party
to go to church. Alice came up to Colin with her books in her hands--she
said to him in a wistful whisper, “You will take his place,” and pointed
out to him silently the marks she had placed at the lessons and psalms.
Then she knelt down between the two awed and astonished men, to say the
familiar prayers which only a week ago Arthur himself had read with his
dying voice. Though at times articulation was almost impossible to
Colin, and Lauderdale breathed out of his deep chest an Amen which
sounded like a groan, Alice did not falter in her profound and still
devotions. She went over the well-known prayers word by word, with eye
and voice steadfast and rapt in the duty which was at the same time a
consolation. There are women of such sweet loyalty and submission of
spirit, but neither Lauderdale nor Colin had met with them before.
Perhaps a certain passiveness of intellect had to do with it, as well as
Alice’s steady English training and custom of self-suppression; but it
made a wonderful impression upon the two who were now the sole
companions and guardians of the friendless young woman, and gave her
indeed for the moment an absolute empire over them, of which Alice was
altogether unconscious, and of which, even had she known it, she could
have made no further use. When the Morning Prayer was almost concluded
it was she who indicated to Colin another mark in the Prayer-book, at
the prayer for Christ’s Church militant on earth; and they could even
hear the whisper of her voice broken by an irrestrainable sob at the
thanksgiving for all “Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
fear,” which Colin read with agitation and faltering. When they rose
from their knees, she turned from one to the other with her countenance
for the first time disturbed. “You were very very good to him,” she
said, softly. “God will bless you for it,” and so sank into sobbing and
tears, which were not to be subdued any longer, yet were not passionate
nor out of accordance with her docile looks. After that, Alice recovered
her calm, and began to occupy herself with them as if she had been their
mother. “Have you been out?” she said. “You must not stay in and make
yourself ill.” This was addressed specially to Colin. “Please go out
and take a walk; it will do you a great deal of good. If it had not have
been a great festa it would not have been so bad; but, if you go up to
the Villa Conti, you will find nobody there. Go up behind the terrace,
into the alleys where it is shady. There is one on the way to the
Aldobrandini; you know it, Mr. Campbell. Oh go, please; it is such a
beautiful day, it will do you good.”
“And you?” said Colin, who felt in his heart an inclination to kneel to
her as if she had been a queen.
“I shall stay at home to-day,” said Alice. “I could not go out to-day;
but I shall do very well. Sora Antonia will come in from mass presently.
Oh, go out, please, and take a walk. Mr. Lauderdale, he will go if you
tell him to go--you are both looking so pale.”
“Come, Colin,” said Lauderdale, “she shall have her pleasure done this
day, at least, whatsoever she commands. If there was anything within my
power or his--” said the philosopher, with a strange discord that
sounded like tears in his voice; but Alice stopped him short.
“Oh yes,” she said, softly, “it is very good of you to do it because I
ask you. Mr. Campbell, you did not read the right lesson,” she added,
turning her worn face to Colin with a slight reproach.
“I read what I thought was better for us all, mourning as we are,” said
Colin, startled; upon which the sad little representative of law and
order did her best to smile.
“I have always heard it said how wonderful it was how the lesson for the
day always suited everybody’s case,” said Alice. “Arthur never would
make any change for circumstances. He--he said it was as if God could
ever be wanting,” the faithful sister said, through her sobs; and then,
again, put force upon herself:--“I shall be here when you come back,”
she said, with her faint smile; and so, like a little princess, sent
them away. The two men went their way up the slope and through the
little town, in their black coats, casting two tall, sombre shadows into
the sunshine and gaiety of the bright piazza. There had been a
procession that morning, and the rough pavement was strewed with sprigs
of myrtle and box, and the air still retained a flavour of the candles,
not quite obliterated by the whiff of incense which came from the open
doors of the Cathedral, where even the heavy leathern curtain, generally
suspended across the entrance, had been removed by reason of the crowd.
People were kneeling even on the steps; peasants in their laced
buskins, and Frascati women, made into countesses or duchesses, at the
least, by the long white veils which streamed to their feet. The windows
were all hung with brilliant draperies in honour of the morning’s
procession and the afternoon’s Tombola. It was one of the very chief of
Italian holydays, a festal Sunday in May, the month of Mary. No wonder
the two sad Protestant Scotchmen, with mourning in their dress and in
their hearts, felt themselves grow sick and faint as they went dutifully
to the gardens of the Villa Conti, as they had been commanded. They did
not so much as exchange a word with each other till they had passed
through all that sunshine and reached the identical alley, a close
arcade, overarched and shut in by the dense foliage of ilex-trees, to
which their little sovereign had directed them. There was not a soul
there as she had prophesied. A tunnel scooped out of the damp, dewy soil
could scarcely have been more absolutely shut in from the sunshine,
scarcely could have been stiller or cooler, or more withdrawn from the
blazing noonday, with its noises and rejoicings, than this narrow sombre
avenue. They strayed down its entire length, from one blue arch of
daylight to the other, before they spoke; and then it was Lauderdale who
broke the silence, as if his thoughts, generally so busy and so vagrant,
had never got beyond Alice Meredith’s last words.
“Another time, Colin,” said the philosopher, “you’ll no make ony changes
in the lesson for the day. Whiles it’s awfu’ hard to put up with the
conditions o’ a leemited intellect; but whiles they’re half divine. I’m
no pretending to be reasonable. She kens no more about reason than--the
angels, maybe--I admit it’s a new development to me; but a woman like
yon, callant, would keep a man awfu’ steady in the course of his life.”
“Yes,” said Colin; and then with a strange premonition, for which he
himself could not account, he added--“She would keep a man steady, as
you say; but he would find little response in her--not that I regard her
less respectfully, less reverentially than you do, Lauderdale,” he went
on, hurriedly, “but--”
“It wasna your opinion I was asking for,” said the philosopher somewhat
morosely. “She’s like none of the women you and me ken. I’m doubtful in
my own mind whether that dutiful and obedient spirit has ever been our
ideal in our country. Intellect’s a grand gift, callant, baith to man
and woman; but you’ll no fly in my face and assert that it’s more than
second best.”
“I am not up to argument to-day,” said Colin; and they walked back
again the whole length of the avenue in silence. Perhaps a certain
irritability, torn of their mutual grief, was at the bottom of this
momentary difference; but somehow, in the stillness, in the subdued
leafy shade, which at first sight had been so congenial to his feelings,
an indescribable shadow stole over Colin’s mind--a kind of indistinct
fear and reluctance, which took no definite shape, but only crept over
him like a mist over the face of the sun. His heart was profoundly
touched at once by the grief and by the self command of Alice, and by
her utter helplessness and dependence upon himself and his friend. Never
before had he been so attracted towards her, nor felt so much that
dangerous softening sentiment of pity and admiration, which leads to
love. And yet--; the two walked back silently under the dark ilex-trees,
and across the piazza, which was now thronged with a gay and
many-coloured crowd. The brighter the scene grew around them, the more
they shut themselves up in their own silence and sorrow, as was natural;
and Colin at length began to recognise a new element, which filled him
with vague uneasiness--an element not in the least new to the perplexed
cogitations of his guardian and anxious friend.