Franz and the young ladies came. The poor girls had no idea that their father was failing so rapidly; they had thought surely the doctor would be able to help him, and the Lord would spare him a little longer. They had taken turns in watching by him, of late, and it struck them strangely that they should all be there at once, with Franz, and Habermann, and Daniel Sadenwater.
"What is it, what is it?" began Fidelia, to the old inspector.
Habermann took her hand, and pressed it. "Your father has become worse, he is very ill, he wishes to see your brother---- Herr von Rambow, if you will write a couple of lines, I am going to send the carriage for the doctor, and the coachman can take the letter to the post. In three days your brother can be here, Fräulein Fidelia."
"He will not last three hours," said Daniel Sadenwater, softly, to Habermann as they came out of the sick-room.
And the three daughters stood around their father's bed, weeping and lamenting, and would fain hold fast the prop that had upheld them so long, and each was thinking anxiously for something to alleviate and help, and the three hearts beat more and more anxiously and quickly, and the one heart ever more slowly and feebly.
Franz sat in the ante-room, listening to every sound, and now and then going into the sick-room. He had never before seen the departure of human life, and he thought of his own father, whom he had always imagined like his uncle, and it seemed as if his own father were dying a second time. He thought also of his cousin, who was not here, and whose place he filled, and thought that he should love him the more, all his life.
Habermann stood at the open window, and looked out into the night. It was just such a warm, damp, cloudy night as that in which his heart had come so near to breaking. Then it was his wife, now his friend; who would come next? Would it be himself, or---- No, no, God forbid! that could not be.
And Daniel Sadenwater sat by the stove, and did what he had done every evening for thirty years; he had a basket of silver forks and spoons on his lap, and on the chair near him lay a polishing cloth, and a silk pocket-handkerchief; and he rubbed alternately the spoons and forks with the handkerchief, and as he looked at his master's name on the fork which he had polished every evening for thirty years, his eyes were so dim that he couldn't see whether it were bright or not, and he set the basket down, and looked at the fork till his eyes ran over with tears.
Amid all this trouble and sorrow, the pendulum of the old clock moved steadily back and forth, back and forth, as if old Time sat by a cradle and rocked his child safely and surely to sleep.
And he slept. Two eyes closed themselves forever, the dark curtain between Here and Beyond dropped softly down, and this side stood the poor maidens, lamenting and vainly stretching their arms after that which was gone, and wringing their hands over that which was left behind. Fidelia threw herself down by her father's body, and sobbed and cried until she was taken with spasms. Franz, full of sympathy, lifted her in his arms, and carried her out of the room, and her two sisters followed, in new anxiety for their darling, and Habermann was left alone with Daniel Sadenwater. He pressed down the eyelids of the dead, and after a little turned away with a heavy heart; but Daniel sat on the foot of the bed, looking with his quiet face into the still more quiet face of his master, and he held the fork still in his hand.