DEATH.
One dreary night, when no star glimmered in the dark expanse of heaven,
when the swamps were converted into lakes, and mud was lord below, and a
drizzling rain monarch above, and desolation reigned all around, a
solitary horseman drew rein by the gate of Paradise, and, without
alighting from his steed, groped about for the rusted iron chain which
served the purpose of bell-pull. Having at length, not without some
difficulty, succeeded in discovering it, he jerked it so violently and
determinedly that a peal echoed through the darkness sufficient to have
roused the forms of the departed from their graves in the neighbouring
churchyard, had they slept any lighter sleep than that which, so far as
this world is concerned, truly knows no waking.
But though that sound had no power to disturb the tranquil repose of the
dead, it immediately attracted the attention of the living; for, at the
summons, the same person who had given ingress to the carriage on the
evening of Mina’s arrival years previously, went shivering forth to
admit the untimely visitor: but, apparently, he was either no stranger
to her, or else an expected one; for, without question or comment of any
kind, she turned the key in the lock and bade him enter, adding also a
caution relative to a tree which had fallen across the drive during the
violence of a late storm.
“How is the baronet now?” inquired the new comer, springing from the
saddle and accepting the woman’s offer of a lantern to light him on his
way.
Slowly and solemnly came the answer forth on the air of the winter’s
night, whilst the rain-drops pattered in her face, and her white lips
trembled, partly with cold, but more with a feeling of mysterious awe:
the air, which is filled perpetually with all sorts of falsehoods and
evasions, uttered by the tongues of men and hearkened unto by the ears
of their fellows, was charged with at least one great truth when she
responded,
“Sir Ernest is dying.”
The person to whom this information was given, made no reply; but,
throwing his horse’s bridle over one arm and taking the proffered
lantern in the other hand, cautiously proceeded along the moss-covered
avenue, which had never, for a quarter of a century past, known the
beneficial effects of fresh gravel, and at length, by dint of
perseverance, he succeeded in reaching—without having received any
bodily injury by the road—the house, where his presence was most
impatiently expected.
“I need not hurry myself,” he had murmured, whilst endeavouring to make
his horse leap over the fallen trunk of an ancient beech tree, the glory
of which was departed for ever, “I need not hurry myself, because, if he
die intestate, the money will be distributed more equitably than he
could ever prevail on himself to devise it. To be sure, if he depart
this life before I get there, I cannot, with any degree of propriety,
make a charge, and so shall have my ride for nothing; but still I do not
want him to leave his gold to those harpies, and there is no one thing
in this world so beneficial as taking matters quietly—it is so much
better than putting oneself in a fuss about nothing: and accordingly,
carrying his principle fully into practice, he knocked leisurely for
admittance, gave his horse in charge to the man who opened it, added
some words of caution in regard to rubbing the animal down properly, and
shook the rain thoroughly off his own garments, ere he ascended to the
room where Sir Ernest Ivraine was, indeed, as the woman had said,
“dying.””
For, at length, the only creditor whom he found himself unable to cheat
was glamouring loudly for attention; that stern creditor, whose name is
Death, who makes with all flesh such short accounts and such long
friends, whose summons can never be disobeyed, the sum total of whose
bill of mortality must be paid in full, without deduction or discount,
had finally arrived in person to “square all up” with the old miser, and
take him from the contemplation of his money bags for ever.
Up the carpetless staircases the attorney went creaking, along endless
corridors he strode deliberately; tattered faces scowled on him from out
of dingy frames ranged along the dark damp walls; the wind swept in
sudden gusts through the passages, and then died off, in sobs and
murmurs, in the remotest corners of the house; the rain pattered
mournfully against the diamond-paned casements. It was a horrible place,
and the stranger felt a chill creep over his soul as he followed his
conductress, an elderly female, to the death chamber.
“What a house to live in!” he had said half aloud, glancing askance at
dismal chambers and narrow galleries, and wide, low, unlighted halls,
“What a house to _live_ in!” but, as the opening door disclosed the
baronet’s apartment and the goodly company it contained, he thought,
“What a place to _die_ in; such a set to die surrounded by!”
For at the extreme end of that large comfortless chamber stood an
ancient bedstead, hung with faded tapestry literally in ribbons; and in
that bedstead, by the dim light afforded by a solitary candle, the
attorney saw that Sir Ernest Ivraine lay dying, eagerly watched by the
eyes of all his connexions, who had come to see him expire and to hear
what he would leave them. Like vultures from afar, they had scented the
prey, and hurried from north and south, east and west, to be in at the
death, to get share of the spoil: nephews from Hertford, cousins from
London, a brother-in-law from Suffolk, married nieces from Durham,
husbands with their wives, mothers with their daughters, brothers with
their sisters, wild young men, hungry old maids, sordid calculating
bachelors, fortune-hunting parents, all flocked, at the first report of
danger, to the spot; all came to see and judge for themselves, to plot
and scheme and push and jostle; all gathered from far and near to speak
to their “dear good relative” and try to screw, or wheedle, or snatch a
few guineas: and some score pair of money-sharpened eyes, of all colours
and shapes and sizes, peered curiously and anxiously from various
positions at him, who, having comprehended them individually and
collectively during life, now sneered sardonically upon them at death.
Though they would scarcely, at that moment, have made way for a prince
of the blood royal to pass, they divided in order that the attorney—who,
to them, seemed more than monarch then—might reach the goal at which he
evidently aimed,—Sir Ernest’s side; and when the man of law stooped down
to listen to a few words the baronet whispered in his ear, the looks of
the anxious spectators became rivetted on him, as though he were lord
and ruler of their several destinies for the momentous “time being.”
“Sir Ernest requests to be left alone with me for a few minutes,” said
Mr. Medill, with an unmoved face and in a tone of true professional
calmness; and the brief sentence struck a chill unto many hearts, the
owners whereof felt that the moment the death-room fortress was vacated,
hope of any bequest must be abandoned also. There was first a movement
amongst the group and then a pause.
“Pray go,” murmured the baronet feebly; “I cannot make my will in the
presence of so many, it confuses me;” and, by way of allaying their
evident fears, and also of inducing them to comply with his request, he
added, with a horrible distortion meant to represent, but which rather
disfigured, a smile,—“Be assured I shall not forget you, present or
absent.”
This was enough: some, to win his affections by prompt obedience, stole
instantly to the door on tiptoe, others moved forward to press his hand;
but these the baronet impatiently waved back, exclaiming, “I shall see
you again after a little;” and at length all, save Ernest, the attorney,
and the baronet, had departed from the chamber.
“Do you wish me to remain?” asked the first, seeing his father’s eyes
turning towards him.
“No,” responded Sir Ernest; and his son, feeling that wealth or beggary
depended on the events of the next fifteen minutes, slowly followed his
relatives to the drawing-room, where, around a wood fire (piled high,
and blazing—as no fire, for years past, had done in that
house—cheerfully) they stood in moody groups, silently calculating
chances, or else whispering what the old miser had said to each of them,
and how they thought he looked, and what they expected he would devise
unto them.
With one arm resting on the mantelpiece, Ernest Ivraine remained like a
statue, looking into the fire and thinking—as he had done more than
fifteen years previously, only with a treble portion of anguish—of his
present, of his past, of his future. The hour he had then longed for was
now striking; did the sound bring aught but regret with it? what _could_
make him happy now? Not, assuredly, the event he had sinfully wished for
in times long passed; not the death of him who had been his mother’s
husband, his father; not a barren title; not an encumbered property; not
wealth; not an unmortgaged estate: if poor, he could scarcely be
otherwise than miserable; if rich, he felt happiness was far off as
ever. He had refused, in former days, to go forth boldly, self-reliant;
he had stayed to inherit riches, which now, at the end of fifteen weary
years, might be bequeathed to him, or might not: for money, he had
endured; for it, she whom he knew _now_ how he loved had wedded him; for
it, he had made her and himself wretched. It could never buy affection,
nor peace of mind, nor joy, nor bring one moment of happiness again to
the soul of Ernest Ivraine: he had thirsted for gold, he had cast all
other hopes from him in his sullen pursuit of it; and now, when the
fountain lay so near, at which, _perhaps_, he might be permitted to
drink, he turned, half-sickened, from the contemplation, and felt that,
to undo some portion of what had been done, he would thrust the draught,
untasted, unwished for, from him.
He gazed, with his outward eyes, on the flaming faggots; but Mina was
what he mentally beheld there, she who would not return, if poor; who
should not return to him, if rich: her pale melancholy face looked
steadfastly at him through the blaze. He once had longed for wealth for
his own sake; he had then pined for it for hers; but now, wealth and
poverty, it was much the same to him, for he had learned to love
something better than self, or brother, or money, or lands; something
that could never be dear to him again, that had never been attached to
him, who had left that house and him and the chance of future fortune
sooner than continue to endure the yoke, which love, on her part, had
never lightened; which, from the day of her marriage till that of her
departure, she had borne reluctantly and detested always.
Oh! if he had been able to give her a happier home, to meet her with
pleasant smiles, to talk to her without constraint, perhaps all might
have been different; had he been more like his brother Henry—less
gloomy, less melancholy, less broken-hearted——Mina would then have
learnt to love him. Some vague thoughts like these swept through his
mind, but even while they did so he thrust them from him with his usual
jealous reflection,
“Why waste affection on her? she never cared for me, and never will; she
married me for interest, and has reaped the bitter fruits.”
Ernest raised his head indignantly as he muttered the words, and before
him stood all his connexions, waiting anxiously, like unclean birds of
prey, for the death of Sir Ernest, his father.
And he had been no better than one of them for fifteen years; his crime
had been worse than theirs, for the tie which bound him to the miser was
closer than any connecting one of those present. He turned faint and
sick at heart, as the full enormity and meanness and baseness of that
which Henry had pointed out and fled from, long, long ago,—which his
connexions were doing, which he had done,—struck home for the first time
to his soul. And Mina, was she in like manner a sordid, mercenary
creature, who had wedded him solely for money, and left him when she
discovered they had mutually deceived each other? held something back
which ought in marriage to have been revealed? Was Mina indeed a mere
worldling,—a calculating, selfish creature? His mouth answered “Yes,”
but the love of his heart perpetually responded, “No.”
Oh! it was only then, when it was too late, that Ernest Ivraine
discovered how little money had latterly become to him—how much Mina,
his wife, had always been: but still pride and anger and jealousy
prevented his confessing that knowledge had come to him—knowledge of how
fervently he loved her.
“If my father leave me a beggar baronet,” he rapidly resolved, “we can
remain as we are; if not, I will make her a handsome allowance, should
she desire it, but never see her again;” and, having formed this brief
stern determination, he resumed his dreary contemplation of the fire,
making rapid strides now, when it was too late, in that heartlore which
all learn at some period of existence or other, viz., that affection and
friendship are the greatest blessings in life, and that gold cannot buy
them, or supply their place, even for a single hour.
Whilst some score of relatives, near and remote, were building beautiful
“_chateaux en Espagne_” on the slender foundation of some stray word, or
thought, or look, Sir Ernest Ivraine—the individual who they hoped
would, at the last hour, turn architect for their especial behoof, and
give those chateaux the only thing they actually required, to wit, a
solid secure basis on hard cash—was quietly settling his affairs, and
their expectations, by a few strokes of that magical, and sometimes
diabolical, instrument—a lawyer’s pen.
“Is the room clear?” he demanded, as his son closed the door behind him.
“Is the room clear?” and he strove to penetrate into the darkest and
remotest recesses of the chamber; but the twilight preceding that long
night which shrouds all earthly objects from mortal view was fast
gathering around him, and obscuring the outward vision of the miser, who
had for so many years seen everything but—good.
“Stoop down,” he added when the attorney answered “Yes;” and, as if
fearful of any lurking spy hearing and defeating his last and only
testamentary disposition of his property, he whispered in Mr. Medill’s
ear,
“I leave to the eldest boy of my second son Henry all my estates, and
money, and houses, and lands, and mortgage deeds; to my eldest son
Ernest what I cannot keep from him—a title and the entailed estate of
Paradise, and Lady Ivraine if he can find her; to my relatives what they
will scarcely thank me for—their own properties, and wives, and
daughters, and husbands, and fathers, and fortunes if they have any, and
my best thanks for this latest and most disinterested visit. Be quick
now, and make it short.”
The rapid pen flew over the paper, the only pause occurring when the
attorney inquired if he would not leave Ernest enough to clear Paradise
of its mortgages; but the baronet growled out so angry a “No” that Mr.
Medill’s white goose-quill received a kind of additional impetus from
the word, and made better speed across the sheet than ever.
“The executors?” demanded the attorney, when he had almost concluded.
“Henry Ivraine and James Medill,” was the response.
“Who do you choose to witness the deed?” asked the latter, turning over
the leaf and writing his own name as executor, according to order.
“Call two of my nephews and my respected brother-in-law,” chuckled the
old man; “as in signing they can read nothing but the name of one
executor, they will imagine they are down for a large sum of money, and
they will only be mistaken, that’s all, that’s all.”
There was a something so perfectly diabolical about the baronet’s
mirth,—so fiendish in his exultation at the prospect of their
disappointment when he would be lying stark and cold, that the attorney,
although he had made many strange wills, and stood beside many
death-beds, felt perfectly appalled at this insensibility to the near
approach of that which hath dismayed warriors and vanquished conquerors.
“Call them,” repeated the miser, smiling sardonically, as if the whole
affair were merely a capital practical joke; “they will consider it a
proof of confidence: confidence, said I? Yes—that they won’t cheat me,
because they can’t, or kill me, because they would gain nothing by it;
call them till I see their faces—I wish I could see them when the will
is read!” and the old man laughed till Mr. Medill thought he looked more
like a fiend than a human being, and began to wonder if he were actually
one.
“You forget,” he remarked, with a sort of loathing towards all parties
concerned, “that you could take no more effectual plan of opening their
eyes to the actual contents of your will, inasmuch as, if legatees, they
could not be witnesses.”
“True!” answered the baronet; “what a pity! well, ring for Humphries:
tell him to bring two others who can write from the servants’ hall. My
grand relatives have supplied me with footmen witnesses in plenty; but
make haste, I have no time to lose.”
Tramping across the carpetless floor, the men came promptly; and, as
they bowed severally and collectively with an air of outward respect to
the baronet, whom they inwardly despised, Sir Ernest, death
half-palsying his tongue, said, in his old imperious tone,
“Stand there: watch me read over this will, and sign my name to it; then
affix yours also.”
He pointed to a spot at the bottom of the couch as the position he
wished them to occupy; and, at a look from his client, Mr. Medill handed
him the document; and, supporting him in a half-sitting posture, held
the candle close to the paper, whilst the baronet read, or rather
pretended to read, it over.
“You wrote all down as I told you,” he whispered in a tone so low that
the sentence reached no ear save that of him for whom it was intended.
“Word for word,” was the laconic reply.
“And no more,” added Sir Ernest.
“Neither more nor less,” responded the attorney.
“Hold the light steady; don’t you see you are dropping the tallow,” said
the baronet in a louder key; then laying his long bony hand on the
paper, he continued,
“I acknowledge this to be my last will and testament. Give me a pen and
I will perfect it.”
Dead silence reigned throughout the apartment,—not a sound was to be
heard, except the uncertain scratching of the pen on the paper as the
miser tremblingly traced his name, “Ernest Claude Ivraine, Bart.;” but
when he concluded he himself broke the stillness by remarking, “I never
dot an ‘i’ nor cross a ‘t;’ it wastes ink for no purpose. If any one
dispute the validity of this will, you can swear to my signature by
that;” and, sinking back on his pillow as he finished this brief speech,
he stared with glassy eyes away into the darkness of the dreary chamber
without a solemn thought of the darker eternity lying beyond.
“Sign here,” said the attorney, turning away with a sort of shudder and
addressing the men; and, at the bottom of the paragraph, “Signed,
sealed, published, and declared by the said Ernest Claude Ivraine,
Baronet, as and for his last will and testament, in presence of us who
have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses, at his request and in
presence of each other,” speedily appeared strange hieroglyphics,
purporting to be the names of Roger Humphries, Hugh Symes, and John
Leford.
“You can go,” said Mr. Medill, as he looked at the blotted characters,
for the instrument by them was perfected,—made a thing of law: to bind,
to hold, to make, to mar, to disappoint, to rejoice. The old man had
finished his last work on earth: not so evil in deed, perhaps, as many
another he had planned and executed, but not one whit less vindictive
and cruel in thought.
“Do you wish for your son or any of your relatives?” inquired the
attorney, who would have preferred that some other individual should
occupy his post; but the miser answering “No,” he felt himself
constrained to remain. Mean, and wicked, and base, and revengeful as the
old baronet was, he could not leave him to die alone.
Five minutes dragged slowly away; what a solemn thing it seemed for the
one to sit and the other to lie there, dreading, waiting, listening for
the approach of death. How tardily it came, and yet how swiftly.
Mr. Medill gazed all around the dreary carpetless apartment, at the
tattered draperies, at the flickering candle, on the pinched and haggard
face of him who soon would be a corpse. A horror came over the
attorney’s soul—albeit, he was neither a particularly religious nor
timid man,—a sort of recoiling from this method of starting on the long
journey, and watching in darksome solitude the expected summons of the
ghastly messenger: he knew the miser was thinking, not of another world,
but of this; not of the use, or rather misuse, he had made of his
talents, but of how Henry’s son would improve or squander them; of
Ernest’s dreadful disappointment when it turned out that he was left a
beggar.
He knew just as well as if he had seen his heart what was dwelling
there,—regret, not for having abused the great gifts entrusted to his
keeping, but because he could not carry his estates and guineas and
title deeds and mortgages with him; sorrow, not for having cursed his
children’s lives, but for being at last compelled to relinquish all to
the son of one of them; not a kind or good or holy thought, but angry,
vindictive, sordid reflections. The lawyer’s eyes became rivetted on Sir
Ernest; they seemed fascinated to his countenance: truly, it was not by
any grace or beauty of expression to be found there.
At length the old man, as if struck by some sudden thought, made a
feeble sign for Mr. Medill to bend his head close to him; and,
concluding that perhaps some further, and hoping that some better desire
had occurred, even at the eleventh hour, to the baronet, the solicitor
inclined his ear in an eager, though still rather solemn professional
death-bed style, to the white trembling lips.
“There is no use in wasting the candle,” gasped his client; “blow it
out.”
For a moment Mr. Medill felt too much astonished to obey; and then, ere
he had time to comply with the request, born of ‘the ruling passion
strong in death,’ a chill blast from the boundless gulf of eternity came
sweeping through the room and extinguished for ever the faint mortal
light that had flickered within the old miser’s attenuated frame, with
just sufficient distinctness to reveal to view the utter darkness and
meanness of his narrow soul.