“Oh, father!” she cried, with a keen pang of pain at what she thought the wandering of his mind. “You forget, you forget that they are dead.”
“Dead!” he repeated, slowly. “I don’t forget; but do you know what that means? We never understand anything till we come to it in this life. I’m coming very close, but I don’t see—yet—except that it’s very different—very different—not at all what we thought.”
“Father,” she cried, in the tumult of her thoughts: “oh, tell me something about yourself! Are you happy—do you feel—do you remember—”
Alicia Penton had said the prayers and received the faith of Christians all her life, and she wanted, if she could, to recall to the dying man those formulas which seemed fit for his state, to hear him say that he was supported in that dread passage by the consolations of the Gospel. But her lips, unapt to speak upon such subjects, seemed closed, and she could not find a word to say.
“Happy!” he said, with that mild reflectiveness which seemed to have come with the approaching end. “It is a long, long time since I’ve been asked that question. If you mean, am I afraid? No, no; I’m not afraid. I’m—among friends. I feel—quite pleased about it all. It will be all right, whatever happens. I don’t seem to have anything to do with it. In my life I have always felt that I had everything to do with it, Alicia; and so have you, my dear; it’s your fault, too. We were always setting God right. But it’s far better this way. I’m an old fellow—an old, old fellow—and I wonder if this is what is called second childhood, Alicia; for I could feel,” he said, with the touching laugh of weakness, “as if I were being carried away—in some one’s arms.”
His heavy eyes, that were still bright with fever, closed with a sort of smiling peacefulness, then opened again with a little start. “But it seemed to me just now as if there was something to do—what was there to do?—before I give myself over. I don’t want to be disturbed, but if there is something to do—Ah, Gerald, my good fellow, you are here, too.”
Russell Penton had come in to say that the men who had been sent for so hurriedly, they whose coming was so important, a matter almost of life and death, had arrived. He had entered the room while Sir Walter was speaking, but the hush of peace about the bed had stopped on his lips the words he had been about to say. He came forward and took the other hand, which his father-in-law, scarcely able to raise it, stretched out toward him faintly with a smile. “I hope you are better, sir,” he said, mechanically, bending over the soft helpless hand, and under his breath to his wife, “They are come,” he said.
She gave him a look of helplessness and dismay, with an appeal in it. What could be done? Could anything be said of mortal business now? Could they come in with their papers, with their conflict of human interests and passion, to this sanctuary of fading life? And yet again, could Alicia Penton make up her mind to be balked, disappointed, triumphed over in the end?
“Better—is not the word.” Sir Walter spoke very slowly, pausing constantly between his broken phrases, his voice very low, but still clear. “I am well—floating away, you know—carried very softly—in some one’s arms. You will laugh—at an old fellow. But I don’t feel quite clear if I am an old fellow, or perhaps—a child.” Then came that fluttering laugh of weakness, full of pathetic pleasure and weeping and well-being. “But,” he added, with a deeper drawn, more difficult breath, “you come in quickly. Tell me—before it’s late. There is something on my mind—like a shadow—something to do.”
Alicia held his hand fast; she did not move, nor look up; her eyes blank, introspective, without any light in them, making no reply to him, fixed on her father’s face; but her whole being quivering with a conflict beyond describing, good and evil, the noble and the small, contending over her, in a struggle which felt like death.