"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Stallbrass solemnly.
"I was to ask your name, if you please, sir," said Mrs. Clarke with some hesitation.
"Certainly; there is my card," and he laid one on the table. "I shall call in the morning." Then he took up his hat and went away, having declined the offer of the carriage. Mrs. Clarke ordered the coachman to return to Portland Place, adding that his mistress would remain with her father. "I wonder your master hasn't been here afore this," said the housekeeper in conclusion.
"Master's out of town; worse luck!" was the sympathetic answer of the footman, as he jumped up beside the coachman, and they drove off.
Mrs. Clarke went slowly up the long staircase to the room about which such awful suspense and interest gathered, unmindful of the card which lay upon the table in the dining-room, and was swept away with other rubbish afterwards and forgotten; and when she stood beside Katharine by the dying man's bedside, all remembrance of the stranger had faded out of the minds of both.
The dying man! Yes, the fiat had gone forth--he was dying. Ned Guyon, the ci-devant jeune homme par excellence, the trifler by vocation and profession, the man of all others with whom it was impossible to associate an idea of solemnity, the dandy in dress, the roué in morals, the persifleur in religion, the man in consideration of whom it would have been particularly pleasant to disembarrass the mind of belief in present and future accountability,--this man was dying. Not slowly, with time and opportunity for reflection, for repentance, for "setting his house in order;" but quickly, dumbly, as a stricken animal might die--as men die in whom the brain is killed first, and the machine has but a little while to labour on afterwards. His daughter saw it all, realised it all in a minute, even as she crossed the threshold of the room she had never entered since her wedding-day; and there mingled with the horror and anguish of the moment a sudden sense of recognition, and yet of strangeness, as she saw, without looking at them, in the inexplicable vividness of perception which comes in moments of strong emotion, the "soulless things" she had lived amongst for so long in the old life gone for ever. And here was another life going away for ever. She did not doubt it for one instant; and when the physician, who had known her from her girlhood, gravely took her hand, and whispered to her that there was no hope, the dying man lying insensible to any sight or sound, she shuddered strongly from head to foot, but she did not weep, or shrink from the touch or the voice.
From the senseless figure upon the bed, over which the strange doctor was stooping, his fingers busy with hopeless investigations at the heart and the wrist--from the ghastly distorted face, so much more terrible, with its rouge and cosmetics, its wig and its pearl powder all removed, than any face of reverend old age, however worn and wasted, can ever be--from the limp, bluish hand lying upon the coverlet, with the heavy seal-ring and its pretentious blazon, with the showy golden buttons hanging from the loosened sleeve--Katharine's haggard gaze roamed over the room almost unconsciously. It was in most respects the same as when she had inhabited it; but several of her father's special belongings had been brought from the den, and occupied the place of the feminine properties dispossessed. Her dressing-table, none too large for Mr. Guyon's requirements, was in its accustomed place, and the long glass had not been moved. But the writing-table she had been accustomed to use was there no longer, and in its place, in the recess beside the fireplace, stood a large cabinet, whose heavy doors closed over a range of wide, shallow shelves, and also shut in a desk. A basket, half full of scraps of torn paper, stood between the burly carved legs of this old-fashioned piece of furniture; and in front of it was the well-worn red-leather arm-chair which Katharine remembered from her babyhood. The clothes which had been taken off the insensible man were lying in a heap over the back of this chair--bright in colour, juvenile in cut, and painful to see, when one glanced from them to their wearer of a few hours ago. A bunch of keys had fallen from the gaping coat-pocket upon the ground, where it lay with a few crumpled papers, a card of the races being conspicuous among them.
"I believe I can do no more," said the strange doctor, as at length he relinquished his hopeless task. Then the two left the room together, and after a little Katharine's old friend returned. By this time she had drawn a chair to the bedside, and was seated there, gazing fixedly on the rigid face, which looked as though death itself, when it should come, would not seal it more utterly up from all impressions of the outer world. She was lost in thought, and was quite passive while the doctor gave his final directions to the housekeeper, who was to remain all night with the dying man. She understood him to say that he must go home now (he lived close by), but was to be summoned if any change took place. He gave a few simple directions, which the two women could carry out, and which were of a merely perfunctory character, and designed to relieve them by giving them occupation, rather than the patient, for whom there was nothing more to be done until the undertaker's turn should have arrived; and he went away, whispering to Katharine that if he were not sent for sooner, he would be with her at seven on the following morning.
The night wore on, and Katharine and Mrs. Clarke kept their terrible watch. They were for the most part quite silent; the one in the chair beside the bed, the other seated at the fireside, and coming from time to time to gaze disconsolately upon the dying man. No weariness came upon Katharine as the hours crept on. The strong excitement kept her up; and as she administered the few cares of which her father's condition allowed, the enforced composure of her manner did not break down. The silence of the room was awful, as silence under such circumstances always is; the clock upon the chimneypiece ticked loudly, the showy gold watch, with its trumpery bunch of trinkets, which had been deposited upon the dressing-table, also ticked on, till late in the small hours, when it stopped. The fire burned low and dim, and flickered upon the housekeeper's weary figure in the deep arm-chair, and upon the ribbons of her cap, as her head nodded abruptly forward, in the uneasy snatches of broken slumber. Sometimes a little flame sprung out and glimmered upon the silken folds of Katharine's rich dress, upon the gold bracelet of the arm laid upon the bed, upon the pale stern face keeping its wakeful watch.
There were times during those dread hours when the dying man groaned heavily; and then the two women would bend eagerly over him, using the prescribed restoratives, and trying to discern some symptom of consciousness, even of pain; but it never came. Ned Guyon had spoken his last words--had experienced his last emotion in this world; and what they were has already been told.