It always seems to me that one feels one's personal insignificance more keenly in a big city than anywhere else. The hurry and bustle on all sides witness to the self-interest which rules every individual of the crowd, to the exclusion of any sincere concern for others. The feeling was accentuated when we reached the hotel. There all was brightness and movement; in the brilliantly lighted dining-room guests were eating, drinking, chatting, and enjoying life; in the hall and on the staircases attendants were moving swiftly about, visitors were coming and going. Each one's pleasures, comforts, and advantages were the business of the hour. Yet in some chamber overhead a momentous crisis was at hand for one poor, lonely man, who had to leave behind him this scene of busy life, to enter upon an eternity of weal or woe. Upon the passing moments everything depended for him; he had to prepare to meet his God. Around him things were taking their usual course; it mattered little to the majority of the people under that roof whether he lived or died, and less still how his soul would fare in that passage. Yet the things which made up the present happiness of the crowd were those which he had labored so strenuously to procure—ease, enjoyment, freedom from care—the companions of wealth. For these he had bartered not only the toil and stress of his best years, but something infinitely more precious; part of the price had been the favour of his God! Now he had to part with all these gains, willing or unwilling; would he have the grace to sue for the mercy which might still be his for the asking?
We had ascertained that Gowan still lived, though there was no hope for his recovery, and were ascending the staircase to our rooms when we encountered a priest coming down. He regarded Val with evident interest, then stopped and accosted him. He proved to be one of the neighboring parochial clergy, who had just been visiting the dying man. Val invited him to our room, and there we learned the circumstances of the case.
Gowan had been in Glasgow about a fortnight, having come thither immediately after landing in Liverpool. He was seriously ill when he arrived at the hotel, and was compelled to take to his bed at once. A doctor was sent for, and found him suffering from heart disease, which had already reached an advanced stage. In spite of every attention the patient became rapidly worse. He would not infrequently fall into fits of unconsciousness, which were the prelude to a state of coma in which he would eventually pass away from life.
To the man's credit, be it said, he at once asked for a priest when he became aware of his danger, and had afterward desired to see Val. All the Sacraments had been administered, and Gowan lay in a weak state, hovering between life and death. I could not but think of the lasting gratitude of Christian Logan and her children, which had led them to remember this man daily in their prayers; who could tell how great a part those prayers had had in securing for him the grace to make his peace with God at the eleventh hour?
Val went in alone to Gowan's room; it was not for me to take any part in such an interview. It was not long before he was back again in our own apartment. Gowan's reception of him had been all that could have been desired. The man expressed sincere sorrow for his ill behavior, and begged Val's forgiveness. But what was still more satisfactory was his message to Christian and her children. He asked pardon for his unkindness in deserting them; they would soon see, he said, how dear they were to him.
"He has made his will in their favor," was Val's summing up of the matter. "He was just explaining that fact when he had another bad attack quite suddenly, and I came away, after summoning the nurse."
That conversation, short as it was, proved to be the last in which the dying man was to take part with my brother. He passed away a short time after, having never recovered consciousness. The Catholic nurse had sent for Val a few minutes after he had rejoined me. We both went to the sick-room, and my brother had said the prayers for the dying, followed by those for the repose of his soul when Gowan ceased to breathe.
The funeral was over and we had been back in Ardmuirland for some weeks before any tidings arrived about the dead man's affairs. All arrangements as to payment of expenses and the like were carried out by a Glasgow lawyer, who had been empowered to act for Gowan's agent in America. The most thorough search had failed to discover anything in the shape of a will among the dead man's effects in Glasgow, and it was supposed to be in the keeping of the American lawyer. When tidings did arrive, they were such as to fill us with consternation. The will in the lawyer's possession was dated more than two years before, after Gowan's return to America from Ardmuirland. Its terms, moreover, by no means tallied with the information given by the dying man to Val; for in it there was no mention of the Logans at all, everything being bequeathed to the Freemason's lodge of which Gowan had been a member.
Val was puzzled, but not convinced.
"It's a mystery, certainly," he said; "but I feel absolutely satisfied that there is another will somewhere. Poor Gowan said so, unmistakably."