Prior to having all this done, Shafto had operated on one of the documents most dexterously and destructively with his pen-knife!
'A peerage! a peerage!—rank, wealth, money, mine—all mine!' he muttered under his breath, as he stored the packet away in a sure and secret place, and while whistling softly to himself, a way he had when brooding (as he often did) over mischief, he recalled the lines of Robert Herrick:
'Our life is like a narrow raft,
Afloat upon the hungry sea;
Hereon is but a little space,
And all men, eager for a place,
Do thrust each other in the sea.'
'So why should I not thrust him into the hungry briny? If life is a raft—and, by Jove, I find it so!—why should one not grasp at all one can, and make the best of life for one's self, by making the worst of it for other folks? Does such a chance of winning rank and wealth come often to any one's hands? No! and I should be the biggest of fools—the most enormous of idiots—not to avail myself to the fullest extent. I see my little game clearly, but must play warily. "Eat, drink, and be merry," says Isaiah, "for to-morrow we die." They say the devil can quote Scripture, and so can Shafto Gyle. But I don't mean to die to-morrow, but to have a jolly good spell for many a year to come!'
And in the wild exuberance of his spirits he tossed his hat again and again to the ceiling.
From that day forward the health of Lennard Melfort seemed to decline more rapidly, and erelong he was compelled by the chill winds of the season to remain in bed, quite unable to take his place at table or move about, save when wheeled in a chair to the window, where he loved to watch the setting sun.
Then came one evening when, for the last time, he begged to be propped up there in his pillowed chair. The sun was setting over Revelstoke Church, and throwing its picturesque outline strongly forward, in a dark indigo tint, against the golden and crimson flush of the west, and all the waves around the promontory were glittering in light.
But Lennard saw nothing of all this, though he felt the feeble warmth of the wintry sun as he stretched his thin, worn hands towards it; his eyesight was gone, and would never come again! There was something very pathetic in the withered face and sightless eyes, and the drooping white moustache that had once been a rich dark-brown, and waxed à l'Empereur.
His dream of life was over, and his last mutterings were a prayer for Florian, on whose breast his head lay as he breathed his last.
The two lads looked at each other in that supreme moment—but with very different thoughts in their hearts. Florian felt only desolation, blank and utter, and even Shafto, in the awful presence of Death, felt alone in the world.