"You have known him a few weeks. Think what I have lost,--the child,
the boy, the man! All my hopes were in him,--I did not myself know how
wholly!"
And beyond this anguish lay other, that he would have put off till its
time, but it pressed forward.
"Colvil, you are going home. You go to be consoled. What am I going
to?"
On the side-street, the swift tread of horses and the roll of rapid
wheels. A wagon stopped before the gate. What a joy Charles Shaler's
coming was to have been to us!
He was prepared. He came forward erect and stern. He saluted us
gravely in passing, went in and stood beside the bier. He remained
gazing intently for a little time,--then, laying his hand lightly on
the sacred forehead, raised his look to heaven. He came out composed
as he had entered.
Shaler spoke apart with Brompton, and returned to us.
"You would leave this place as soon as possible?" he said to Dr.
Borrow.
"Yes."
I had meant to combat the Doctor's desire that I should leave
him,--not for my own sake, but because I thought he would need me; but
I submitted now. Shaler would assume every care, and I saw that Dr.
Borrow yielded himself up implicitly.
* * * * *
The moment came. We lifted him reverently, Orphy propping with his
weak hands the arm that had once lent him its strength. We carried
him out into the sunshine he had loved, bright then as if it still
shone for him. The wind ruffled the lifeless hair whose sparkling
curls I had seen it caress so often.
* * * * *
It is over. Over with the last meeting, the last parting. Over with
that career in which I was to have lived, oh, how much more than in my
own! That brain cold! What vigorous thought, what generous enterprise
benumbed within it! That heart still, whose beats should have stirred
a nation's! The head for which I had dreamed so pure a glory has sunk
uncrowned. The name dies away in space; not a whisper repeats it.
Harry Dudley has passed from a world which will never know that it
possessed and has lost him.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spellings and use of hyphens have been kept (e.g.,
"door-steps" and "doorsteps").