And Love himself, as he were armed in steel,
Steps forth, and girds him for the strife with death.
PICCOLOMINI.
THE doctors were in almost constant attendance--the minister of the
parish came to pray by the bedside of the half-conscious patient, whose
heavy moans broke in upon his supplication. The children of Maidlin,
awe-stricken and full of wonder and curiosity, hung about the gate of
Allenders, telling each other how Harry fell, and how the trail was
found on the road, where his horse had dragged him along the damp,
loose soil. And their mothers came in bands in the early afternoon
to speak of it with kindred awe and mystery, and stealing round by
the back of the house, beckoned Mysie out to learn from her how the
sufferer was. More dignified people, and even Sir John Dunlop himself,
sent messengers to inquire for poor Harry; and Gilbert Allenders, like
an ill-omened shadow, continually hovered about the door.
Poor Harry! they never spoke to each other, these women who watched
him; but Agnes and Rose perceived when they approached the bed that it
was only a strong self-restraint which prevented Martha from thrusting
them away. She was jealous now, even of them--she could not bear to
see him touched by any hand but her own--as if it was her hand alone
which could touch him without inflicting pain; and they saw her shiver
when the surgeon drew near him, as if with bodily fear. And sometimes,
when Martha laid Agnes down upon the sofa in this sad sick room, and
covered her tenderly as if she were a child, an hour of feverish sleep
would fall upon the little wife; and Rose, when sent to her own room
for the night, after lingering at the door, and wandering up and down
to see if anything could possibly be wanted which was not ready, would
weep herself into a trance of slumber, from which the awakening was
bitter--but Martha never slept.
And Harry lay upon his bed, unconscious, and never said a word which
testified that he knew them there. Conscious of pain--conscious of
the agony of being touched or moved, which drew from him those shrill
cries and heavy moanings--and with dim, dreamy eyes, which seemed to
recognize sometimes where it was he lay, as they wandered over the
well-known furniture; but though he spoke of them all in his times
of greater ease, and addressed them by loving names, which brought
a swooning deadly sickness over Agnes, and convulsed Martha with a
terrible tenderness, he never spoke to them as present beside him;
wandering, broken lines of thought, strange visible associations
which connected one distant thing with another, came from him in
an interrupted flow--and sometimes strange half-dreaming prayers,
exclaimed vehemently at one time, at another repeated with a placid
smile like a child’s--“Lead us not into temptation--deliver us from
evil,” made up the prolonged and audible reverie of Harry’s stricken
soul.
On the morning of the third day, while Martha sat beside him on one
side, and Agnes, with her face buried in the coverlet, knelt by the
bed, silently praying and weeping, on the other, a gradual awakening
came to Harry’s face. Martha, whose look never left it, saw the dreamy
eyes light up, at first faintly, but gradually rising into life. Then
he saw Agnes, and stealing his feeble hand along the bed, laid it on
her head. She started up with a faint cry, and Harry’s trance was
broken.
“Am I to die?” he said, in a whisper, when for some moments they had
held his hands in silence--his hands, one of which was bathed in the
tears of Agnes, while on the other had fallen a single great burning
drop, falling from Martha’s heavy eyelid, like a drop of living fire.
But no answer came to him, except the convulsive sobs of Agnes, and a
tightened and clinging pressure of the hand which lay in Martha’s grasp.
“Then let me see them, Martha,” said Harry, faintly; “let me see them
all once again. You will be better without me, and I will be better
away. Oh God! my God! I have lost a life.”
“But not a soul, Harry--not a soul,” cried Martha, bending down her
head, to kiss with burning vehemence the hand on which her tears fell
now like hail-drops. “First look up, Harry, my son! my son!--and there
is another life!”
And the dim eyes turned upward to the roof--to the human mortal
screen built between him and the sky; and saw, not the heavens opened,
and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, but only a household of
weeping women, half frantic with love and eagerness, crying aloud for
him before the everlasting throne, where mercy sits and judgment; and a
blank numbness was on Harry’s soul. He could not throw himself before
this footstool, and ask with his last breath for that deliverance which
comes from Him who never thrust one empty away. Sleep was upon him, and
he craved repose; he trusted to them who interceded--he leaned with
faint consciousness upon their supplications; but for himself he could
ask nothing--his heart was voiceless, apathetic, asleep.
“Pray for me, Martha,” said Harry, faintly.
For this was all his hope.
Pray for him! When was it, working or resting, that Martha forgot thus
to pray?
“And gather them all,” said Harry--“gather them all in here, that I may
see them before I die.”
He said the words with a faint, mournful pathos. He was not rebellious
to his doom--poor Harry! but it seemed to him that he was sinking into
some pensive, gentle rest. This was how the visible death, drawing
near, disclosed itself, in the midst of his great pain, to his heart.
And Martha called them in, one by one--Rose, Lettie, Katie Calder,
little Harry, and the infant boy. You would have thought, to hear him
speak, that this dying man was passing away into the heaven which he
already knew for home, and that there interposed no obscuring cloud
between him and the sky; or that this suffering of death consciously
made up for all the evil that had gone before--for neither remorse nor
terror overshadowed Harry, nor did he speak of faith. Poor Harry! this
benumbed and quiet peace seemed all he desired.
And when he had bidden them farewell, gently, faintly, without any
violence of emotion--with a perfect calm and submission, and what
people call resignation to the will of God--Harry laid himself down
again to die.
But his head had scarcely fallen back again upon the pillow, when he
started violently--a start which wrung from him a half scream of pain.
“Send for Lindsay, Martha!--send for Robertson, in Stirling! Any
one--any one you can get most easily!--at once, before I die!”
Without hesitation, Martha went to obey his order; and John, who was
swift and ready, was in the saddle in a very few minutes, galloping to
Stirling for a lawyer.
But when Martha returned to the sick chamber, Harry had relapsed into
unconsciousness, and she sat down, watching by him silently, as she
had done before. Within a few hours the lawyer came. The whole country
rang with the news of the accident, and people forgot how they had
condemned poor Allenders, in pity for him, and for the family, whose
singular devotion to him it needed little discernment to discover. So
Mr. Robertson had left his house at once, to his own inconvenience, to
come to the dying man. But Harry lay upon his bed, communing aloud with
his own heart; and the very lawyer turned aside and wept, as he heard
this heart laid open. A sinful man had Harry been!--shipwrecked and
lost! Yet it was a child’s heart!
And Martha’s words, or an influence more wonderful than them, was
breathing on the chaos of this disturbed and wandering soul. Poor
Harry! And his lips spoke aloud the texts and psalms which he had
learned a child, at Martha’s knee. In the room there was a hush like
death, through which now and then the restrained sob of Agnes struggled
faintly. She was still lying in the same position, her face hidden, in
prostrate, powerless grief; and Rose knelt beside her, pale as death,
fixing the eyes, from which her tears fell down continually, upon
Harry’s face, while her throat quivered now and then with a convulsive
gasp. Martha, at his other side, with her head bent upon her folded
arms, shook with great tremblings, like successive waves--but no sound
came from her; and the lawyer, afraid to move, and full of awe, stood
silent at the foot of the bed. Through this scene ascended Harry’s
voice, low and faint, but distinctly audible; and now he reads from his
child’s memory, what has been read by his bedside only recently, in
hope to catch some passing gleam of consciousness--the last words of
the Lord!
Oh! wonderful, benign and tender words!--spoken under the very
death-shadow, by that One who alone was free to redeem--who can tell
what was their influence upon the rapt soul, which, past all human
intercourse, was still open to the dealings of the Lord? Mysterious awe
and wonder hushed even their very prayers. No human speech could move
him now, or reach his veiled and hidden soul: but the way was all open
to God.
All through the night Harry continued thus--with broken prayers,
and words of Holy Writ, mingling with the common things to which he
sometimes returned--and towards the dawn he fell into a broken sleep.
The lawyer, meanwhile, waited. It was a singular kindness; but Harry
might awake out of his trance at any moment, and this man, who had a
kindly heart, was concerned for the family, and sufficiently interested
to give his time without much grudging. And they had all a vague
expectation that Harry would awake from this sleep, in possession of
his faculties.
They were right, he did so; and after a few minutes of repose and
contemplation, and of tender words to those around him, he started
again, and asked for the lawyer. Mr. Robertson came from the library,
where he had been sitting, and Harry sent his sisters and his wife away.
They were not long shut out from the sick room. The lawyer left
the chamber and the house, with a farewell of deep and melancholy
sympathy; and for about an hour after, Harry continued conscious of
their presence. But this consciousness was broken and disturbed; and
afterwards he sank back into a slumbrous, interrupted reverie, from
which he never woke again.