Those were pleasant days and nights at the old Bascom Place, in spite of
the malady with which the Judge was afflicted. They were particularly
pleasant when he seemed to be brighter and stronger. But one day, when he
seemed to be at his best, the beginning of the end came. He was sitting
on the piazza, talking with his daughter and with Francis Underwood. Some
reference was made to the Place, when the old Judge suddenly rose from
his chair, and, shaking his thin white hand at the young man, cried out:
“I tell you it is mine! The Place always has been mine and it always will
be mine.”
He tottered forward and would have fallen, but Underwood caught him and
placed him in his chair. The old man’s nerves had lost their tension,
his eyes their brightness. He could only murmur indistinctly, “Mine,
mine, mine.” He seemed suddenly to have shrunk and shriveled away. His
head fell to one side, his face was deadly pale, his lips were blue, and
his thin hands clutched convulsively at his clothes and at the chair.
Mildred was at his side instantly, but he seemed to be beyond the reach
of her voice and beyond the limits of her grief, which was distressful to
behold. He tried indeed to stroke the beautiful hair that fell loosely
over him as his daughter seized him in her despairing arms, but it was in
a vague and wandering way.
Judge Bascom’s condition was so alarming that Francis Underwood lifted
him in his arms and placed him on the nearest bed, where he lay gazing at
the ceiling, sometimes smiling and at other times frowning and crying,
“Mine, mine, mine!”
He sank slowly but surely. At the last he smiled and whispered “Home,”
and so passed away.
He was indeed at home. He had come to the end of his long and tiresome
journey. He smiled as he lay sleeping, and his rest was pleasant; for
there was that in his dead face, white and pinched as it was, that bore
witness to the infinite gentleness and mercy of Christ, who is the Lord.
It was an event that touched the hearts of his old neighbors and their
children, and they spoke to one another freely and feelingly about
the virtues of the old Judge, the beautiful life he had lived, the
distinction he had won, and the mark he had made on his generation.
Some, who were old enough to remember, told of his charities in the days
when prosperity sat at his board; and in discussing these things the
people gradually came to realize the fact that Judge Bascom, in spite of
his misfortunes, had shed lustre on his State and on the village in which
he was born, and that his renown was based on a character so perfect, and
on results so just and beneficent, that all could share in it.
His old neighbors, watching by him as he lay smiling in his dreamless
sleep, shortened the long hours of the night with pleasant reminiscences
of the dead. Those who sat near the door could see, in an adjoining room,
Mildred Bascom sitting at Miss Sophie Underwood’s feet, her arms around
the older woman’s waist. It was a brief and fleeting panorama, as indeed
life itself is, but the two, brought together by grief and sympathy,
often sat thus in the years that followed. For Mildred Bascom became the
mistress of the Bascom Place; and although she has changed her name, the
old name still clings to Underwood’s domain.