“Lady Randolph will pay attention to her own interests,” said the old man.
“Ah! that she will,” cried Ford, with energy. There was much more meaning in the tone than in the words; and the inference was not agreeable to old Trevor, who retired within himself, and sat for the rest of the afternoon with a very serious face ruminating how to invent safeguards for the will, which, however, he would not sign, as Ford suggested. “There’s something more I want to put in,” the old man said pettishly. “I’ll try to wind it all up to-morrow.” But as a matter of fact, he did not want to wind it all up, or conclude the document. When he did so, his occupation would be gone. It would be the conclusion of all things. With a natural shrinking he thrust this last action from him, notwithstanding the composure with which he had long regarded his own death as something necessary to the fulfillment of his intentions. But he did not feel disposed to put his final seal to it, and dismiss himself out of the world with a stroke of his pen. To-morrow was soon enough. When Lucy returned from school, she found him shivering by the fire. It was a cold day, but he was chilled by more than the weather; chilled in his vivacious spirit, which had done more to keep him warm than his good fire or warmly lined dressing gown. “No, I am not ill,” he said, in answer to her inquiries, “not at all poorly, only low, Lucy. If you and the rest should throw me overboard after I am gone; if it should turn out that I have taken all this trouble for nothing—thinking of you night and day, and planning for your good and your happiness—if it should be all for nothing, Lucy?”
“But how could that be,” said Lucy, with her usual calm, “when you have been so particular—when you have written it all down?”
“Yes, I have written it all down,” he said, “and it can’t come to nothing, if you will be a good girl, and take care that all your old father’s wishes are carried out.”
“Papa, I promise you, all you have arranged about me, and all your wishes for me, shall be carried out,” said Lucy, with a very slight emphasis upon the pronoun, which indicated a mental reservation, but her father did not notice this. His voice, already enfeebled, took a coaxing, beseeching tone.
“I’ll not fear anything, I’ll try not to fear anything, if you’ll give me your promise. Give me your promise, Lucy,” he said, and Lucy repeated with more effusion, when she saw the feverish uneasiness in which he was, the promise she had already made.
“Except about Jock,” she said, within herself; but even if she had said it aloud her father’s thoughts were too much bent on the general question to have remarked this. Ford, who was very anxious too, beckoned to her from behind the screen, and whispered, “Get him to sign it, ask him to sign it!” with the most energetic gesticulations; but how could Lucy press such a request upon her father? They were all anxious in the house that evening, and Mrs. Ford sat up all night, and her husband lay on the sofa in his clothes, fearing a midnight summons, but it was not till the next evening that the blow came. When their anxiety had been softened, and their precautions forgotten, the loud jar and tinkle of the bell once more woke little Jock in his little bed, and Ford from his comfortable slumbers; and this time it was no false alarm. Old Trevor was seized at last by the paralytic attack which had been, hovering over him for sometime. Ford going hastily for the doctor caught a bronchitis which kept him in bed for a week (just, his wife said, like a man—when he is most wanted), but the old man had his death-stroke. The house changed all at once, as sudden and dangerous illness always changes the abode it dwells in. All thought, all consideration were merged in the sick-room. For the first few days not even the affairs which he had left unsettled were thought of. The poor chilly blue-and-white drawing-room in which he had spent his days stood vacant, colder, and more commonplace than ever, yet with a pathos in its nakedness. The blotting-book, with the big blue folio projecting on every side, still lay on the writing-table where it had lain so long; but nobody touched it except the house-maid who dusted it daily, and was often tempted to take the sheaf of untidy papers to light her fire. What could it have mattered if she had lighted her fire with them? The work upon which the old man had spent so much of his fading life was of little importance now. No one thought of it except Ford, who at the worst of his bronchitis mourned over the uncompleted, document.
“Will he ever come to himself, doctor? Will he ever have the use of his faculties?” he moaned; but even this no one could tell.
The old man lay for more than a week in this state of unconsciousness; but after a time began to give faint indications of returning intelligence. He could not move nor speak, but his eyes regained a gleam of meaning, and very awful it was to see this reawakening, and to guess at the desires and feelings that awoke dimly, coursing like lights and shadows, a dumb language upon his countenance. One night Lucy felt that his eyes were fixed upon her with more meaning than before, and the three anxious people gathered round the bed, questioning and consulting each other.
He was like a prisoner, making faint half distinguishable gestures beyond the bars of his prison—questions on which deliverance might depend, but which the watchers could not understand. Presently the efforts increased, the powerless ashy old hand which lay on the coverlet, all the fingers in a helpless heap together, began to flicker in vague movement. Old Trevor’s eyes had not been remarkable for any force of expression, for nothing indeed, save for the keenness of his seeing when he was well. They had been small and sharp, and of a reddish gray, with puckered eyelids, making them smaller than they were by nature. Now they seemed to stand out enlarged and clear, and full of a spiritual force, which was partly weakness and partly the feverish dumb impotence of a desire to which he could not give words. They all gathered closely round, as anxious and not less helpless than he. Lucy in her inexperience was driven desperate by this crisis. She knelt down by the bedside, speaking to him wildly, clasping her hands, and beseeching, “What is it? What is it? Oh, papa, what is it? Try and speak to me,” she cried. This hopeless kind of interrogation went on for some time without any result, and they had all subsided again into the quietness of despair, when Lucy was suddenly enlightened by a movement of the old man’s crumpled fingers, which he had managed to curve as if holding a pen. “He wants to write,” she said, hurrying to find a pencil and paper, but these were rejected by an indignant gleam from the sufferer’s eyes.