Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now.
"Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him. "Wake up, for——," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought of heaven in connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well.
"Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice.
"No, no," said Colonel Tempest reassuringly. "It's only me, a friend. It's Colonel Tempest."
"I wish it was the parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if God could be greened quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter incoherently.
As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to remain true to his own interests, only his aspect of those interests had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it.
It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his strict attention to never losing a chance, he had inadvertently mislaid his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But a chance was a thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his last now.
Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men clashed, and at a vital moment.
"For God's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do you more good in the end."
Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at Colonel Tempest.