But he was wandering once more among his own thoughts, and heeded not my looks, nor what they meant.
“Life is a strange problem,” he said, with the sombre shadow which it used to wear, returning upon his face. “I am about to find the solution of it, Hester—all my existence centres in one event. I have suffered one act to overshadow my best years—that was my great error—what a fool I was! because I failed in one thing, I threw everything away.”
“Because the failure in that one thing poisoned all your life!” I exclaimed, “oh! do not blame yourself, father! the blame did not lie with you.”
“What was that to me if the penalty did?” said my father, in his old reasoning tone—a tone which contrasted so strangely with the feeble voice, and the great weakness in which he spoke. “One act should not poison life, Hester! not even for a woman, how much less for a man! There are greater things in this world than marrying, or giving in marriage.”
He spoke with an emphasis of scorn, which made me tremble more and more. Alas! I saw that still in his very heart rankled this poisoned sorrow; and I shuddered to think that the same doom was mine. That I would carry to my death this same bitterness—that my life was already overshadowed as his had been, and that I was ready, like him, to throw everything away.
“If it should be that I am to find out the wherefore of these dark mysteries; if that is the congenial occupation in the place whither I go;” he paused suddenly when he had said so much—though I watched him eagerly, and listened, he did not continue. He fell into immediate silence, and again he began to sleep.
The confidence with which he spoke to me was strange. I scarcely could understand—perhaps his weakness had some share in it, perhaps my absence, and it was the first time I ever had been absent from home—had inclined his heart towards his only child, and perhaps he could not help those audible wanderings of his thoughts, as strength and life failed him, and he gathered all his powers to his heart to keep his identity—to be himself. When he was awake I saw his eyes, I scarcely could believe in what was coming; but when he slept, I thought I could see moment by moment how the current ebbed and ebbed away.
During one of these intervals of sleep, the doctor came in, and with him Mr. Osborne. With that practised scientific eye, which it is so dreadful to mark for our dearest ones, the doctor looked at him, and shook his head. He was lying so solemnly with his closed eyes, and not a movement in his frame, so pale now, so feeble, so perfectly at rest, that a pang of momentary terror struck to my heart; but he was not gone. He did not wake till the doctor had gone away, and Mr. Osborne was left standing beside me. I never raised my head, nor greeted him. I did not answer his whisper of satisfaction at finding me here—even by my father’s bedside. I would not meet as a friend a man who had wilfully snared and betrayed me.
When my father opened his eyes, he saw his friend by his bedside; but his eyes were not so full nor so clear, nor so bright with life and intelligence as they had been—there was a change—he stirred nervously.
“Ha! Osborne, my good fellow!” he said, “I am just setting out—any messages, eh? any word to—to—Helen.”