The sun was shining into the west chamber at Norlaw. It was the room
immediately over the dining-room, a large apartment, paneled and painted
in a faint green color, with one window to the front and one to the side
of the house. The side window looked immediately upon the old castle,
and on the heavy masses of blunt-leaved ivy which hung in wild festoons
everywhere from this front of the ruin; and the sun shone in gloriously
to the sick chamber, with a strange mockery of the weakness and the
sorrow there. This bed was what used to be called a “tent-bed,” with
heavy curtains of dark brown moreen, closely drawn at the foot, but
looped up about the pillows. At the side nearest the sunshine, the
Mistress, whose place had been there for weeks, stood by the bed
measuring out some medicine for the sufferer. A fortnight’s almost
ceaseless watching had not sufficed to pale the cheek of health, or
waste the vigor of this wife, who was so soon to be a widow. Her fresh,
middle-aged, matronly bloom, her dress careful and seemly, her anxious
and troubled brow, where deep solicitude and hope had scarcely given way
to the dread certainty which everybody else acknowledged, made a very
strange contrast, indeed, to the wasted, dying, eager face which lay
among those pillows, with already that immovable yellow pallor on its
features which never passes away; a long, thin hand, wasted to the bone,
was on the coverlid, but the sufferer looked up, with his eager, large
black eyes toward the medicine glass in his wife’s hand with a singular
eagerness. He knew, at last, that he was dying, and even in the
solemnity of those last moments, this weak, graceful mind, true to the
instincts of its nature, thought with desire and anxiety of dying well.
The three sons of the house were in the room watching with their mother.
Huntley, who could scarcely keep still, even in the awe of this shadow
of death, stood by the front window, often drawing close to the bed, but
unable to continue there. The second, who was his mother’s son, a
healthful, ruddy, practical lad, kept on the opposite side of the bed,
ready to help his mother in moving the patient. And at the foot,
concealed by the curtains, a delicate boy of fifteen, with his face
buried in his hands, sat upon an old square ottoman, observing nothing.
This was Cosmo, the youngest and favorite, the only one of his children
who really resembled Norlaw.
The caprice of change was strong upon the dying man; he wanted his
position altered twenty times in half an hour. He had not any thing much
to say, yet he was hard to please for the manner of saying it; and
longed, half in a human and tender yearning for remembrance, and half
with the weakness of his character, that his children should never
forget these last words of his, nor the circumstances of his dying. He
was a good man, but he carried the defects of his personality with him
to the very door of heaven. When, at last, the pillows were arranged
round him, so as to raise him on his bed in the attitude he wished, he
called his children, in his trembling voice. Huntley came forward from
the window, with a swelling heart, scarcely able to keep down the tears
of his first grief. Patrick stood by the bed-side, holding down his
head, with a stubborn composure--and Cosmo, stealing forward, threw
himself on his knees and hid his sobbing in the coverlid. They were all
on one side, and on the other stood the mother, the care on her brow
blanching into conviction, and all her tremulous anxiety calmed with a
determination not to disturb this last scene. It _was_ the last. Hope
could not stand before the look of death upon that face.
“My sons,” said Norlaw, “I am just dying; but I know where I am in this
strait, trusting in my Saviour. You’ll remember I said this, when I’m
gone.”
There was a pause. Cosmo sobbed aloud in the silence, clinging to the
coverlid, and Huntley’s breast heaved high with a tumultuous motion--but
there was not a word said to break the monologue of the father, who was
going away.
“And now you’ll have no father to guide you further,” he continued, with
a strange pity for them in his voice. “There’s your mother, at my
side--as true a wife and as faithful, as ever a man had for a blessing.
Boys, I leave your mother, for her jointure, the love you’ve had for me.
Let her have it all--all--make amends to her. Martha, I’ve not been the
man I might have been to you.”
These last words were spoken in a tone of sudden compunction, strangely
unlike the almost formal dignity of the first part of his address, and
he turned his eager, dying eyes to her, with a startled apprehension of
this truth, foreign to all his previous thoughts. She could not have
spoken, to save his life. She took his hand between hers, with a low
groan, and held it, looking at him with a pitiful, appealing face. The
self-accusation was like an injury to her, and he was persuaded to feel
it so, and to return to the current of his thoughts.
“Let your mother be your counselor; she has ever been mine,” he said
once more, with his sad, dying dignity. “I say nothing about your plans,
because plans are ill adjuncts to a death-bed; but you’ll do your best,
every one, and keep your name without blemish, and fear God and honor
your mother. If I were to speak for a twelvemonth I could not find more
to say.”
Again a pause; but this time, besides the sobs of Cosmo, Patrick’s tears
were dropping, like heavy drops of rain, upon the side of the bed, and
Huntley crushed the curtain in his hand to support himself, and only
staid here quite against his nature by strong compulsion of his will.
Whether he deserved it or not, this man’s fortune, all his life, had
been to be loved.
“This night, Huntley will be Livingstone of Norlaw,” continued the
father; “but the world is fading out of my sight, boys--only I mind, and
you know, that things have gone ill with us for many a year--make just
the best that can be made, and never give up this house and the old name
of your fathers. Me’mar will try his worst against you; ay, I ought to
say more; but I’m wearing faint--I’m not able; you’ll have to ask your
mother. Martha, give me something to keep me up a moment more.”
She did so hurriedly, with a look of pain; but when he had taken a
little wine, the sick man’s eye wandered.
“I had something more to say,” he repeated, faintly; “never mind--your
mother will tell you every thing;--serve God, and be good to your
mother, and mind that I die in faith. Bairns, when ye come to your
latter end, take heed to set your foot fast upon the rock, that I may
find you all again.”
They thought he had ended now his farewell to them. They laid him down
tenderly, and, with awe and hidden tears, watched how the glow of
sunset faded and the evening gray stole in over that pallid face which,
for the moment, was all the world to their eyes. Sometimes, he said a
faint word to his wife, who sat holding his hand. He was conscious, and
calm, and departing. His sins had been like a child’s sins--capricious,
wayward, fanciful transgressions. He had never harmed any one but
himself and his own household--remorseful recollections did not trouble
him--and, weak as he was, all his life long he had kept tender in his
heart a child’s faith. He was dying like a Christian, though not even
his faith and comfort, nor the great shadow of death which he was
meeting, could sublime his last hours out of nature. God does not always
make a Christian’s death-bed sublime. But he was fast going where there
is no longer any weakness, and the calm of the evening rest was on the
ending of his life.
Candles had been brought softly into the room; the moon rose, the night
wore on, but they still waited. No one could withdraw from that watch,
which it is agony to keep, and yet worse agony to be debarred from
keeping, and when it was midnight, the pale face began to flush by
intervals, and the fainting frame to grow restless and uneasy. Cosmo,
poor boy, struck with the change, rose up to look at him, with a wild,
sudden hope that he was getting better; but Cosmo shrunk appalled at the
sudden cry which burst as strong as if perfect health had uttered it
from the heaving, panting heart of his father.
“Huntley, Huntley, Huntley!” cried the dying man, but it was not his son
he called. “Do I know her name? She’s but Mary of Melmar--evermore Mary
to me--and the will is there--in the mid chamber. Aye!--where is
she?--your mother will tell you all--it’s too late for me.”
The last words were irresolute and confused, dropping back into the
faint whispers of death. When he began to speak, his wife had risen from
her seat by the bed-side--her cheeks flushed, she held his hand tight,
and over the face of her tenderness came an indescribable cloud of
mortification, of love aggrieved and impatient, which could not be
concealed. She did not speak, but stood watching him, holding his hand
close in her own, even after he was silent--and not even when the head
sank lower down among the pillows, and the eyes grew dim, and the last
hour came, did the watcher resume the patient seat which she had kept
so long. She stood by him with a mind disquieted, doing every thing that
she could do--quick to see, and tender to minister; but the sacramental
calm of the vigil was broken--and the widow still stood by the bed when
the early summer light came in over her shoulder, to show how, with the
night, this life was over, and every thing was changed. Then she fell
down by the bed-side, scarcely able to move her strained limbs, and
struck to the heart with the chill of her widowhood.
It was all over--all over--and the new day, in a blaze of terrible
sunshine, and the new solitude of life, were to begin together. But her
sons, as they were forced to withdraw from the room where one was dead,
and one lost in the first blind agony of a survivor, did not know what
last pang of a long bitterness that was, which struck its final sting,
to aggravate all her grievous trouble, into their mother’s heart.