Very Peacefully.
He was dying very peacefully and quietly, very happily, surrounded by
his friends. Sir Simon Orville went in perpetually, blustering rather
at first, because Mr. Henry—as they still, from old custom, mostly
called him—would not be moved to Pond Place, to be made much of for the
closing period of his life, and depart out of it in luxury.
"The exertion might be too great for me," he said, clasping Sir Simon's
hand gratefully. He sat up in bed still; most likely would to the last.
"I am better here in my own poor home, where the boys can run in and
out at will. Thank you ever, Sir Simon."
"But I can't make up to you for the fraud, I can't do the slightest
thing towards it," remonstrated Sir Simon, who was altogether in a
state of repentance for the past, and what it had brought forth—as if
it had been any fault of his. "But for that miserable brother-in-law of
mine, you might have been hale and healthy now, and flourishing in the
world."
"God knows what is best," was the cheering answer of Arthur Paradyne,
the same he had made to Trace. And Sir Simon saw that it must be best:
for there was a serene light of peace in the eyes, in the face
altogether, that worldly honours, be they great as they will, can never
bring.
"He has been leading me through the wilderness in His own way,"
continued Mr. Henry, scarcely above a whisper. "But for the dreadful
trouble that fell upon me, I might not have found my road thus early:
and then where should I have been now? The doctors think, you know,
that under the most prosperous auspices I could not have lived to be
thirty. Oh, Sir Simon, God sees and knows what we do not see, and He
has been guiding me home."
"You could be surrounded by so many more comforts at Pond Place,"
resumed Sir Simon, when he had overcome a troublesome cough.
"But not with more love. I have everything I want, and see how my
friends come round me. Not an instant am I left. Before one goes,
another comes. Sometimes," he added, with a gay smile, "they arrive as
if it were a levée, and we have to borrow Mother Butter's kitchen
chairs. My mother and Mary are here nearly always; Dr. Brabazon and his
daughter come, my pupil Rose comes, the masters come, the boys come,
and you come, you know, Sir Simon. How could I be better off?"
"I should have liked you to get well and live, that I might do
something for you; set you up in a coach-and-four, or some little thing
of that sort," contended Sir Simon, with an expression of face half
cross, half piteous.
Mr. Henry shook his head with a smile: coaches-and-four don't always
bring happiness with them, or drive their owners on the best road to
it. "Could any one have been more bountiful than you, Sir Simon? You
have—"
"Tush!" crossly interrupted Sir Simon. "Is it not my duty to do it, as
Robert Trace cannot? 'Twould be a second fraud on my part if I didn't."
The allusion was this. Sir Simon Orville had hastened to announce his
intention of refunding to Mrs. Paradyne, and with interest, the three
thousand pounds her husband had put into the Liverpool firm, and which
had been lost in the vortex. Not only that: he avowed that George's
future education and career should be his care.
"Why did you not confide in me?" cried Sir Simon. "Why did you not tell
me you were a Paradyne. I'd have helped you on."
"Tell you, Sir Simon! It seemed to me always a species of fraud on my
part to receive the many little favours you were ever wishing to show
me."
"The odd thing to me is, that you should have so fully put credence in
your father's guilt," observed Sir Simon. "Knowing him as you did."
A slight flush, as of remorse, shone in the fading cheeks. No
opportunity had been given him of believing otherwise. His mother, so
impressed with it herself, had succeeded in imparting her impressions
to him, beyond possibility of doubt.
"Where is Raymond Trace, Sir Simon?" he asked in a whisper. "I should
so like to have seen him again. He said he would come, but he did not."
"Well, I'll tell you," said Sir Simon confidentially. "Robert Trace is
in hiding about twenty miles off, and Raymond with him: they are not
out of England, as some suppose; Hopper for one. When the explosion
arose, we were all confused together; as was but natural. Robert Trace
thought he must escape from Hopper; and I—to say the truth—winked at
it. It was not my place to show 'em up to the Lord Mayor; and if a
thousand pounds or so—But never mind that now. When we came to talk
matters over sensibly and coolly, I and Mr. Loftus, we saw that he
could not be made criminally responsible, except Mr. Loftus chose to do
it, for the frauds had been against the firm; and other liabilities
were all paid. We have privately seen Robert Trace (mind, this is
between ourselves) and advised him to face it, and I think he will. He
says he'll be made bankrupt."
"And Hopper?"
"Hopper will be floored—as he deserves to be. Not a single penny shall
he get out of me."
"But he will make Mr. Trace's fraud known, out of revenge, Sir Simon!"
"It is known already known by this time to the very length and breadth
of the land. You don't suppose Mr. Loftus would suffer your father's
name to lie a day under its obloquy! Not he: if Loftus has a proud
nature, it is a just one. And so is Bertie's."
"And generous too," cried Mr. Henry, his face flushing with its old
pleasant light. "Bertie never once insulted George by a look or a word;
but stood by him quietly in many ways, smoothing things for him. He
will make a good and brave man. He comes here every day to sit with me.
I think the duel did him good. It took some of the assumption out of
his spirit."
Down sat Sir Simon with a burst of laughter. That duel, now that he had
overcome the horror it brought to him at the time, was a rich joke.
Gall and Bertie winced at its remembrance still. But they had been firm
friends since.
The days went on. Mr. Henry had more visitors than he sometimes knew
what to do with. His mother was there often; Mary occasionally, as she
could spare time from her occupations with Miss Rose Brabazon, whose
resident governess she was now. Mrs. Paradyne was eating the bitter
bread of repentance: the mistaken line of conduct she had pursued to
him, her eldest and dutiful son, grew harder and harder to reflect
upon. She could not say so; it distressed him too much, and she sat
mostly in silence, letting him hold her hand, yearningly wishing she
might recall the past. Too late; too late. She could not stop the
course of the rapid disease; she could not prolong his life, or bring
back the isolated days he had been condemned to pass, or the weary
nights of labour in which he had wasted his delicate frame: the
sensitive spirit had been wounded to the quick; the tender heart flung
back upon itself. It had been all good for him, no doubt; necessary
adjuncts to that process of purification his spirit had been
unconsciously undergoing for its coming flight to a better world, but
which Mrs. Paradyne could never forgive herself. The deceit she had
forced him to observe in regard to his identity had told upon him,
there was no doubt, more than any other untoward circumstance: and Mrs.
Paradyne had the comfort of knowing that she had helped—on the end. He
was, so to say, living a lie; it was altogether wrong, unjustifiable,
little better than a fraud on the Head Master; and neither his health
nor his natural integrity could bear up against it. And so, Mrs.
Paradyne sat by his bedside in silence; she and her aching heart. Now
that the relationship was known, people could trace the likeness in
their faces; which had once puzzled Miss Brabazon.
And there was another who would come and sit by him, and take his hand;
and, closing the door, read to him words from the Book of Life—and that
was Dr. Brabazon. The doctor saw the prize that he was losing: he knew
now, if he had never known it before, how valuable Mr. Henry's precepts
had been in the school, and the peace he contrived to shed around
amidst warring elements. Other things were known to the doctor now: the
sojourn of his ill-doing son in the house, and the kind friend Mr.
Henry had been to him. It seemed to have made Tom into a better man;
and he went off to Australia in a spirit of reformation that Mrs.
Butter, in a satirical spirit, "hoped would last."
Rose ran in and out at will, bringing him flowers. One day she came to
him with a great trouble—Emma had found her love-letters, and she was
never, never to write or receive more. Well, Mr. Henry said smiling, as
he pushed her pretty hair off her brow, she was certainly getting too
old for it.
Emma Brabazon would come sometimes, and lift the little table to the
bedside, and make tea at it. She was cheerful now, gay even, for a
great care had been removed from her; she would call him Dr. Henry, or
Professor Paradyne, and laugh over that back suspicion connected with
the gold pencil, now safe in the Head Master's pocket. She confessed to
him that she had had great fears, at the time Lord Shrewsbury was shot,
that it might be her brother who had fired the pistol. "Not
intentionally, to do harm, you know," she added; "but he was often down
here, wandering about the plantation, in the hope of meeting me and
getting money from me, and it was so easy for him to have picked up the
pistol."
"Be at rest," said Mr. Henry. "It was not your brother."
Miss Brabazon was surprised at the assured tones. "You know who it
was?"
"It was one of the college boys. Do not ask me more, for that is all I
can say." He intended to carry the secret with him to his grave. And
might have done it, had it lain alone with him.
Of all his casual visitors, he liked best to see the boys. He would
cause them to sit close to him, and talk pleasantly of the journey of
life on which, after this half-year, some of them would be entering.
Not one but treasured his words; not one but would remember them to
profit in the busy battle to come.