Sickness onto Death.
Lady Emmeline arrived from London on the day following that on which the
tragedy recorded in the last chapter was acted out, and with her came
Mrs. Ellenham, who repaired, on hearing of her brother’s illness, by
command of her husband, to the Euston Square railway station, where she
proceeded _viâ_ Holyhead and Kingstown to Galway.
She had never been in Ireland from the day of her elopement, until she
travelled back thither to see her brother on his death-bed, and she
would not have gone then, only the law of Colonel Ellenham was as that
of the Medes and Persians, and if he said, “go”—which he did in hopes of
a bequest—there was no alternative but to pack up and depart.
Poor Lady Emmeline was inexpressibly shocked at sight of her husband.
All the love she had once felt for him woke to live again in a moment,
and she wept as genuine tears as she had ever shed in her life when he
put up his white lips to kiss her.
They had lived latterly like cat and dog, but yet she once loved him,
and she loved him now again when he lay dying, thinking, thinking not of
her, but of many a more attractive woman and most of all of Jenny
Bourke, whom he could see standing by the stream at the back of her
brother’s cottage in all the beauty of her young loveliness, so
innocent, so pure, so tender, and so true.
As for Susan, her brother saw her, but that was about all he would do.
From others she heard the story of his unhappy son; from others she
learned how her husband was mixed up in the matter.
“I would go back to London at once,” she said to Mr. Pryor, “if I were
not afraid.” And accordingly, as she was afraid, she remained at
Kincorth, keeping as much out of the way as possible, and generally
conducting herself after a fashion as unlike all the fashions of Susan
Drewitt as can well be imagined.
Matrimony, or perhaps the absence of matrimony for so many years, had
tamed her effectually, and so she roamed about the place and looked at
the improvements, and wondered if Brian would get Kincorth back again,
and wrote long explanatory letters to her husband, and was considered a
very quiet kind of lady by the servants.
As for Brian, he never left the sick man by day nor by night; and when
the end drew very near, when every one saw that the sickness could never
be cured, the disease never mastered; when it became a question not of
weeks but of hours, Maxwell could not bear his cousin to leave him for
an instant.
They had been at deadly feud once, but they were united now; they had
been bitter enemies, but they were now fast friends; and it was Brian,
who, when the last moments came, wiped the damp dews off Maxwell’s face,
and held his hand while he passed through the portals of death.
Thus he departed. Many a time since, Brian Drewitt has recalled that
scene.
It was noon—noon on a dull, damp November day.
The sick man had been lying all the morning thinking, thinking, and at
last he began to talk.
“What’s that you are saying?” he broke out—and Brian knew from his tone
that he was wandering—“That I made nothing? Give me those maps—reach me
those plans;” and then he went on muttering some words which Brian could
not catch. “There is The Headlands,” he said, in a louder key, “and
Cherryfield, and the Calgillan estates. Isn’t it getting very dark, eh?
What’s that? Are you there, Brian? Have I been asleep?”
“I don’t know. Do you feel tired?”
“No; but it is time I was getting to sleep—these winter nights are very
dark. Ring for lights, Brian, I cannot bear this gloom.”
Brian knew then what was coming, and rose and put his strong arms about
his cousin, and lifted him up a little.
“Can you see any better now?” he said.
“No; it is all darkness, all; Brian, is it night or day? Is it light to
you?”
“It is day, Maxwell, though a very dull day, and I can see well enough.”
“Then this is death,” he said; and he stood at last face to face with
the foe he had dreaded all his life.
There was an utter silence for a moment, during which Maxwell appeared
to be solving some problem in his mind.
Over and over he appeared to be turning the question, while his dim eyes
moved restlessly about, as though striving to catch some gleam, however
feeble, of light.
“It grows darker,” he said, at last, and the cold dew of death was on
his forehead.
“It grows darker—don’t leave me, Brian.” But Brian had no thought of
leaving him.
He had lived without God, but he should not die without man—that was the
idea which passed swiftly through his cousin’s mind.
“Do not let me go,” he murmured; and the hand which Brian held tight in
his, grew cold as marble.
“I think I have made a great mistake,”—he spoke these words out so
loudly, that Brian almost started, and they were the last he ever
uttered. The problem was solved, the life-story finished, the purpose
accomplished, the end of all earthly things reached; and with a sigh,
Maxwell Drewitt, who had raised his head a little, fell back dead on his
pillow.
That was the end.
He laboured and planted, he sowed and reaped, he got him great
possessions, he amassed wealth in abundance, he accomplished what he
said he would; he made the howling wilderness a smiling plain; he found
Headlands a wretched piece of barren land, and he left it an Eden.
Whatsoever his hand found to do, that he performed; whatsoever his mind
planned, that he executed; and yet when he spoke the last words of his
life—when he summed up the whole story of his endeavours and his
successes—it proved to have been all “a great mistake.”
Pitiful! most pitiful! In his prime this man was taken away from among
his treasures—from the place he had longed to possess—from the country
of his birth—from the scenes he had loved to gaze over. What did it
matter, then, whether he had been rich or poor, wealthy or indigent,
lofty or lowly, peer or peasant?—what did it matter? what even in life
had the lands and the houses, had the silver and the gold, profited him?
“I think I have made a great mistake.” Was that sentence spoken in time
or in eternity? Was it uttered as his last farewell to earth, or when he
had passed into the land of shadows? His soul was on the threshold of
both worlds at the moment—to which world was the truth addressed? Was it
spoken with the gloom he had complained of settling down upon him, or
with light ineffable flooding the secrets of our humanity, and making
all those things plain which here we see but as through a glass darkly?
Draw down the blinds, and tread lightly across the room, wherein there
is no life left, but only the body which once held a soul.
Maxwell Drewitt has passed into that dim land which he so dreaded to
face. He has gone away, and left his work to be taken up by another
after him.
Never more may he walk by the sea shore, or stand under the arching
trees that shade the avenue, or ride by lake and river, past mountains
and through the valleys—never more for ever.
His works remain after him, but he himself is departed into that silent
land where no echoes of the waves of time can reach the ears of the
sleepers.
With great pomp and ceremony, with grandeur befitting his wealth and his
influence, and the height to which he had climbed, they bore him to
Eversbeg Abbey, and laid him down to rest.
There, so near to where he made his first start in life, he sleeps
well—free from ambitious hopes, from regretful longings. From all
dreads, from all alarms, he is delivered at last. The unquiet heart is
still, the busy mind hushed into repose. The summer’s sun comes each
year and falls warm and bright on the graves in Eversbeg; but the
summer’s sun cannot quicken the cold body into life.
The great mountains rear their blue summits to heaven, the lakes ripple
and ripple, the rivers flow onward to the sea, and the boulders and the
blocks of granite lie scattered about on the hill sides—the great
Atlantic beats against the iron-bound coast, and up the thousand bays
the waves steal gently as ever—on that strange country through which
Maxwell rode when he was still young, when he had life all before him,
the moon looks down with as cold a light, playing as many fantastic
tricks, creeping up the hills, and lying in the waters just as she did
then.
And in the dancing sunlight Kincorth is beautiful as of old; but the man
who coveted Kincorth,—who vowed to have it, who declared before God that
neither woman nor devil should keep it from him,—where is he?
Lying with the rest of his kindred amid the ruins of Eversbeg,
slumbering with the ivy trailing over his tomb, with the birds
chattering all the day long above his head, dreamlessly, until the hour
comes when he shall have to give an account of that life concerning
which he said—he had made a great mistake.