But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew,
And dull the film along his dim eye grew.--BYRON.
The light broke partially through the half-closed shutters of the room
in which lay Lord Ulswater, who, awakened to sense and pain by the
motion of the carriage, had now relapsed into insensibility. By the side
of the sofa on which he was laid, knelt Clarence, bathing one hand with
tears violent and fast; on the opposite side leaned over, with bald
front, and an expression of mingled fear and sorrow upon his intent
countenance, the old steward; while, at a little distance, Lord
Westborough, who had been wheeled into the room, sat mute in his chair,
aghast with bewilderment and horror, and counting every moment to the
arrival of the surgeon, who had been sent for. The stranger to whom the
carriage belonged stood by the window, detailing in a low voice to
the chaplain of the house what particulars of the occurrence he was
acquainted with, while the youngest scion of the family, a boy of about
ten years, and who in the general confusion had thrust himself unnoticed
into the room, stood close to the pair, with open mouth and thirsting
ears and a face on which childish interest at a fearful tale was
strongly blent with the more absorbed feeling of terror at the truth.
Slowly Lord Ulswater opened his eyes; they rested upon Clarence.
“My brother! my brother!” cried Clarence, in a voice of powerful
anguish, “is it thus--thus that you have come hither to--” He stopped
in the gushing fulness of his heart. Extricating from Clarence the only
hand he was able to use, Lord Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in
the effort to clear remembrance; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to
ask the truth of Clarence’s claim,--at least so the old man interpreted
the meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words
which broke from his lips.
“It is; it is, my honoured lord,” cried he, struggling with his emotion;
“it is your brother, your lost brother, Clinton L’Estrange.” And as he
said these words, Clarence felt the damp chill hand of his brother press
his own, and knew by that pressure and the smile--kind, though brief
from exceeding pain--with which the ill-fated nobleman looked upon him,
that the claim long unknown was at last acknowledged, and the ties long
broken united, though in death.
The surgeon arrived: the room was cleared of all but Clarence; the first
examination was sufficient. Unaware of Clarence’s close relationship to
the sufferer, the surgeon took him aside. “A very painful operation,”
said he, “might be performed, but it would only torture, in vain, the
last moments of the patient; no human skill can save or even protract
his life.”
The doomed man, who, though in great pain, was still sensible, stirred.
His brother flew towards him. “Flora,” he murmured, “let me see her, I
implore.”
Curbing, as much as he was able, his emotion, and conquering his
reluctance to leave the sufferer even for a moment, Clarence flew
in search of Lady Flora. He found her; in rapid and hasty words,
he signified the wish of the dying man, and hurried her, confused,
trembling, and scarce conscious of the melancholy scene she was about to
witness, to the side of her affianced bridegroom.
I have been by the death-beds of many men, and I have noted that shortly
before death, as the frame grows weaker and weaker, the fiercer passions
yield to those feelings better harmonizing with the awfulness of the
hour. Thoughts soft and tender, which seem little to belong to the
character in the health and vigour of former years, obtain then an
empire, brief, indeed, but utter for the time they last; and this is
the more impressive because (as in the present instance I shall have
occasion to portray) in the moments which succeed and make the very
latest of life, the ruling passion, suppressed for an interval by such
gentler feelings, sometimes again returns to take its final triumph over
that frail clay, which, through existence, it has swayed, agitated, and
moulded like wax unto its will.
When Lord Ulswater saw Flora approach and bend weepingly over him, a
momentary softness stole over his face. Taking her hand he extended
it towards Clarence, and turning to the latter faltered out, “Let
this--my--brother--atone--for--;” apparently unable to finish the
sentence, he then relaxed his hold and sank upon the pillow; and so
still, so apparently breathless did he remain for several minutes, that
they thought the latest agony was over.
As, yielding to this impression, Clarence was about to withdraw the
scarce conscious Flora from the chamber, words, less tremulous and
indistinct than aught which he had yet uttered, broke from Lord
Ulswater’s lips. Clarence hastened to him; and bending over his
countenance saw that even through the rapid changes and shades of death,
it darkened with the peculiar characteristics of the unreleased soul
within: the brow was knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride;
and in the eye which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the
waning life broke into a momentary blaze,--that flash, so rapid and
evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being it
has animated, and night--the starless and eternal--falls over the
extinguished lamp! The hand of the right arm (which was that unshattered
by the fall) was clenched and raised; but, when the words which came
upon Clarence’s ear had ceased, it fell heavily by his side, like a clod
of that clay which it had then become. In those words it seemed as if,
in the confused delirium of passing existence, the brave soldier mingled
some dim and bewildered recollection of former battles with that of his
last most fatal though most ignoble strife.
“Down, down with them!” he muttered between his teeth, though in a
tone startlingly deep and audible; “down with them! No quarter to the
infidels! strike for England and Effingham. Ha!--who strives for
flight there!--kill him! no mercy, I say,--none!--there, there, I have
despatched him; ha! ha! What, still alive?--off, slave, off! Oh, slain!
slain in a ditch, by a base-born hind; oh, bitter! bitter! bitter!” And
with these words, of which the last, from their piercing anguish and
keen despair, made a dread contrast with the fire and defiance of the
first, the jaw fell, the flashing and fierce eye glazed and set, and all
of the haughty and bold patrician which the earth retained was--dust!