"I always said, you know, that my father was innocent."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
Very Peacefully.
He was dying very peacefully and quietly, very happily, surrounded by his friends. Sir Simon Orville went in perpetually, blustering rather at first, because Mr. Henry—as they still, from old custom, mostly called him—would not be moved to Pond Place, to be made much of for the closing period of his life, and depart out of it in luxury.
"The exertion might be too great for me," he said, clasping Sir Simon's hand gratefully. He sat up in bed still; most likely would to the last. "I am better here in my own poor home, where the boys can run in and out at will. Thank you ever, Sir Simon."
"But I can't make up to you for the fraud, I can't do the slightest thing towards it," remonstrated Sir Simon, who was altogether in a state of repentance for the past, and what it had brought forth—as if it had been any fault of his. "But for that miserable brother-in-law of mine, you might have been hale and healthy now, and flourishing in the world."
"God knows what is best," was the cheering answer of Arthur Paradyne, the same he had made to Trace. And Sir Simon saw that it must be best: for there was a serene light of peace in the eyes, in the face altogether, that worldly honours, be they great as they will, can never bring.
"He has been leading me through the wilderness in His own way," continued Mr. Henry, scarcely above a whisper. "But for the dreadful trouble that fell upon me, I might not have found my road thus early: and then where should I have been now? The doctors think, you know, that under the most prosperous auspices I could not have lived to be thirty. Oh, Sir Simon, God sees and knows what we do not see, and He has been guiding me home."
"You could be surrounded by so many more comforts at Pond Place," resumed Sir Simon, when he had overcome a troublesome cough.
"But not with more love. I have everything I want, and see how my friends come round me. Not an instant am I left. Before one goes, another comes. Sometimes," he added, with a gay smile, "they arrive as if it were a levée, and we have to borrow Mother Butter's kitchen chairs. My mother and Mary are here nearly always; Dr. Brabazon and his daughter come, my pupil Rose comes, the masters come, the boys come, and you come, you know, Sir Simon. How could I be better off?"
"I should have liked you to get well and live, that I might do something for you; set you up in a coach-and-four, or some little thing of that sort," contended Sir Simon, with an expression of face half cross, half piteous.