Margaret Maliphant

by Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr

Yes, he was quite conscious. Those piercing gray eyes of his shone as with a fire from within like coals in his white face; they were terrible in their acute concentration, as though all the strength of that once strong frame, of that once active mind, had retired to this last citadel; but, black under the shadow of the overhanging brows, they were the dear familiar eyes of old to me, and I was not frightened.

As we approached—I in my trouble still letting my hand lie unconsciously in the squire's—I saw one of those gleams that I have said were often as of sunshine on a rugged moor cross the whiteness of his face.

For a moment the effort to speak was very painful, but he took the squire's hand in his—in both of his—and looked at me, and I knew well enough what he meant to say.

I did not speak. I could not have spoken if I would, for there was a lump in my throat that choked me; but I had nothing to say. How could I have found it in my heart to tell him that what he had seen meant nothing, yet what words would my tongue have made to tell him that I would give my hand to the squire forever? It was not possible. I slipped my hand out of his, but father did not see it. He was looking more at the squire than at me; upon him his eyes were fixed with a strangely mingled expression of pride and entreaty. Thinking of it now, it comes before me as a most pathetic picture of proud self-abandonment and generous appeal. It was almost as though he said: "I have wronged you. Creeds and convictions are nothing. We have always been one, and you are my only friend. Help me in my need." So I have often since read that look in his deep, sorrowful eyes. My dear father! Should I say my poor father? No, surely not. Yet at that moment I thought so; I wanted to do something for him, and the only thing that I might have done I would not do. But the squire came to the rescue.

"I know," he said, tenderly; "be at rest. I will take care of them all."

Not I will take care of her. "I will take care of them all."

My heart went out to him in thanks. He had said I should have courage. He had given me courage.

When he was gone, I took my place at the bedside; I was no longer afraid of Death, or if I was afraid, my love was more than my fear; I stayed beside father till the end. I was thankful that the end did not come for those three weeks. He did not suffer, and he grew to depend upon me so, to turn such trustful and loving eyes upon me whenever I came near him, that they took me out of myself as nothing else could have done. Dear eyes that have followed me all through the after-years to still the pangs of remorse, and to warm the coldness of life. Ah me! and yet those were sore days. Knowing that he was taking comfort as he lay there from the thought that I and the squire would one day be one, I longed to make a clean breast of it. I longed to tell him that a very different figure from good Squire Broderick's crossed my mind many times a day, unbidden and horrible to me, who wanted to give every fibre of myself to him who lay a-dying.

I cannot explain it, I can only say that it was so: dearly as I loved my father, the thought of him did not keep out every other thought. All through those weary watching hours, I was watching for other footsteps besides those that were coming—so slow and sure—to take away what I had loved all my life; black upon my heart lay the shadow of a deeper remorse than that of letting a dying man believe in a possibility that set his mind at rest: I wanted to see Trayton Harrod that I might undo what I had done, that I might tell him the truth about Joyce.

Yes, though I knew well enough that I loved him far too well to think of another, it was not of my love that I thought, sitting there through the dark hours with the sense of that awful presence upon me that might at any moment snatch, whither I knew not, the thing that I had known as my dear father. I only wanted to see him that I might rid my conscience of that mean lie, that I might make him happy, and hear him say that he forgave me; and many is the time I started beside the still bed, thinking I heard that light firm step on the gravel without, or the click of the latch in the front door as the bailiff had been wont to lift it.