"Settle it be——! Not much!" said Arthur. "But I'll dine all right."
Norton Ward went off into his room, laughing.
That was an awful idea—settling! Even though advanced in jest, it had given him a little shock. But he felt pretty safe. He had read Miss Crewdson's letters; she was most emphatically not a settling woman! Her dog, her whole dog, and nothing but her dog, was what Miss Crewdson wanted.
Arthur sat down before his fire and lit his pipe. He abandoned himself to a gratified contemplation of the turn in his fortunes. A great moment when a young man sees his chosen profession actually opening before him, when dreams and hopes crystallize into reality, when he plucks the first fruit from branches which a little while ago seemed so far out of reach! This moment it was now Arthur's to enjoy. And there was more. For he was not only exulting; he was smiling in a sly triumph. What young man does not smile in his sleeve when the Wisdom of the Elders is confounded? And what good-natured Elder will not smile with him—and even clap his hands?
"It's my own fault if that thousand pounds I put in the farce doesn't turn out the best investment of my life!" thought Arthur.
[CHAPTER XXXIII]
A NEW VISION
It was not given to Arthur again to hear his mother's voice or to see her alive. A few days after the first round of the protracted battle over the great case had ended in his favour, just before the close of the legal term, news reached him of her death. She had been suffering from a chill and had taken to her bed, but no immediate danger was anticipated. She had read with keen pleasure Arthur's letters, full now of a new zest for his work and a new confidence. She breathed her gentle Nunc Dimittis; her daughter's future was happily arranged, her son's now opened before him. In simple and ardent faith her eyes turned to another world. As though in answer to an appeal instinctively issuing from her own soul, the end came very quickly. The tired heart could bear no added strain. After making her comfortable for the night, Anna had gone downstairs to eat her own supper; when she came up again, all was over. There was no sign of movement, no look of shock or pain; her eyes were closed. It seemed that sleeping she had fallen asleep, and her peaceful spirit found in an instant the eternal peace of its faithful aspiration.
Here was no place for the bitterness of grief. Death brought a quickened sense of unity and love, and the lost mother joined her children's hands in a renewal of childhood's affection and of sweet old memories. "Peace I leave with you," Anna whispered to Arthur as they stood beside the grave, and he felt that she divined truly the legacy which their mother would have chosen, before all others, to bequeath to them.