The Greatest Heiress in England

by Mrs. Oliphant

The old man made no response. Another groan, the very utterance of despair, broke from him. His eyes closed, his bony fingers fell on the coverlet, a collection of contracted joints, helpless as they had been before. He made a half fling of intended movement, without strength to carry his intention out. What he wanted was evidently to turn his head from the light, to turn the countenance to the wall; what image is there which speaks more eloquently of that despair which is moral death? The spectators stood by mournfully, with but half a sense of the full tragic meaning of the scene, yet vaguely impressed by it, feeling something of the horrible sense of failure, tragical, yet stupefying, which invaded all the half-awakened faculties of the chief sufferer. Even now they were but half aware of it, Lucy looking on with infinite pity and awe, struggling to assure the half deafened ear that it did not matter, that all would be well, while the Fords quickened by self-interest, realized with a dull dismay the loss, the misfortune, which would affect themselves. But the real tragedy remained concentrated in that worn-out old body and imprisoned soul. How much of his life was in those elaborate plans and settlements and he had failed at the last moment to give them the necessary warrant. The old man closed his eyes, and, so far as his will went, flung himself away from the light, turned his face to the wall, yet could not do even that, in the prostration of all his powers.

“If he can sleep, he may wake—himself,” the doctor said doubtfully. It was just as likely he might not wake at all. But the light was carefully shaded, and the nurse, who had no anxiety to disturb her, and the calm of professional serenity to keep her composed, took the place of the other watchers. The doctor, who was interested in an unusual “case,” and who was a young man, as yet without much practice, offered to Ford, who was excited and worn out, to remain, that there might be help at hand, and a professional guarantee in case of any new incident; and this being settled, sent all the other watchers to rest. Lucy, though she would fain have stayed with her father, fell asleep—how could she help it? after so many broken nights—the moment her young head touched the pillow. The Fords were more wakeful, and retired, more to consult together than to sleep, talking in whispers, though nothing they could have said on the upper floor could have reached the sick-room, and full of alarm and trouble as to the consequences of the future. Mrs. Ford, for her part, employed this moment of relief chiefly in crying and mourning over “their luck,” which no doubt would be enough to secure that the old man should die without signing the charter of their privileges. But even the whispering and weeping came to an end at last, and all was still in the house, where the doctor occupied the forsaken drawing-room, so bare and chilly, and the nurse watched in the silent chamber, and old Trevor lay between life and death.

The only one of the family who could not rest was little Jock. Who does not remember that sleeplessness of childhood which is more desolate and more restless in its contradiction of nature, and innocent vacancy than even the maturer misery of wakeful nights all rustling full of care and thought? Jock had been waked out of his first sleep by the muffled coming and going, the sound of subdued steps and whispering voices. He had heard a great deal which “the family” are never supposed to hear. He heard the doctor’s whispered conference with the Fords in the passage. “I can say nothing with certainty,” the doctor had said; “if he can sleep he may be himself in the morning, and able to attend to his business.” “Or he may pass away,” Mr. Ford had said; “at the dawning. That is the time when they get their release.” Pass away! Jock wondered, with a shiver, what it meant. Visions flitted before his eyes of his father’s figure, like that of Time, which he had seen on an old almanac, his gray locks flying behind him, and a long staff in his hand. Where would he go to in the dark, or at the dawning? Jock tried to turn his face to the wall, away from the long mysterious window, which attracted his gaze in spite of himself, and through which he almost expected to see some weird passenger step forth. His door was open, as he liked to have it, and the faint light shining through it usually afforded him a little consolation; but on this particular night, among his vague horrors, this too became a dangerous opening, through which some terrible figure might suddenly appear. He was obliged to turn round again, to keep both door and window within sight. And all kinds of visions flitted before him. The noise of a wagon far off on the road, across the common, suggested the dead-cart of the Plague, rolling heavily, stopping here and there to take up its horrible load. He seemed to hear the bell tinkle, the heavy tramp of the attendants; and at any moment the child felt the door might be pushed open, and some one come to take him away, and toss him among all those confused limbs and dead faces. Or was it his father whom they would seize as he “passed away,” with his gray hair blown about by the winds. Then Jock’s imagination changed the theme, and he was in the valley of death with Christian, hearing all those horrible whispers on every side, and looking into the mouth of hell. He did everything he could to get to sleep; he counted, as far as his knowledge of numbers would go, and said to himself all the poetry he knew; but all was of no avail. When he began to see the walls of his little room grow more distinct round him in a faint blueness, Jock was not encouraged by the prospect of day-break. He thought of what Mr. Ford had said, and of the people who were “released” at the dawning, and he could not bear it any longer; he sprung from his bed, and rushed toward the light in the passage, a light which was more cheerful, more reassuring, than the pale beginning of the day. The door of his father’s room was ajar, and the light was burning within, and a faint glimmer as of firelight. Jock crept in, trembling and shivering, in his little white night-gown, like an incarnation of the white, cold, tremulous, infantile day.

Jock stole in very quietly, feeling protection in the warmth and stillness; he edged his way in the shadow of the curtains, drawing instinctively toward the fire, but afraid of being seen and turned out again. He was afraid, yet he was very curious and anxious about the bed, in which he knew his father was lying. The curtains at the head were thrown back, twisted and pushed out of the way to give more air; and there the pale gray head of the old man revealed itself on the pillow, lying motionless. Jock stopped short with a sob in his throat, and terror, too intense for expression, in his soul. His father had not “passed away;” but whether he was alive or dead, Jock could not tell. The nurse was dozing in the stillness, in her chair by the fire. The day was rising, penetrating, even here, between the closed curtains, with that chill, all-pervading blueness; it was the moment when every watch relaxes, when the strain is relieved, and weariness makes itself felt. Not a sound was to be heard, except now and then the ashes falling, and the breathing of the strange woman in the big chair, who was almost as alarming an object to Jock as his father. The child stood shivering, his mouth half open, to cry, the sob arrested, by pure terror, in his throat.

And whether it was that the sob escaped unawares, or that some sense of the presence of another living creature in the room, that subtle consciousness with which the atmosphere seems to penetrate itself, of a living and thinking soul in it, reached the old man on the bed, it is impossible to say; but while Jock stood watching, his father suddenly opened his eyes, and turned, ever so little, yet turned toward him. Jock was not aware that the old man had been up to this time unable to move, but his imagination was excited, and the instantaneous revival into awful life of the mute figure on the bed produced the strangest effect upon him. A wild scream burst from his lips; he ran out to the stairs crying wildly. “He has got his release,” Jock cried, not knowing what he said.

The cry woke the nurse, brought the young doctor, drowsy and confused, from the next room, and Lucy flying, all her fair locks about her shoulders, down-stairs. The Fords followed more slowly—the very maids were roused. But the release which the old man had got was not of the kind anticipated by his companions. He was liberated from the disease, which nobody had hoped; he had recovered his speech, though his utterance was greatly changed and impeded; and, though one side remained powerless, he retained the use of the other. He was even so much himself as to chuckle feebly, but quietly, when the doctor returned a few hours later, and pronounced him to be almost miraculously better. “I’ll trouble you, doctor, to witness it,” the old man said, babbling over the words, and looking with his enlarged but dimmed eyes at the papers by his bedside. “I’ve got something to add; but I’ll not put off and cheat myself, not put off and cheat myself again.” This they thought was what he said. And thus the will got signed at last.

He lingered for some time after, continually endeavoring to resume his old work, and now and then becoming sufficiently articulate to give full evidence of the perfect possession of his faculties. But within a week a third seizure carried off the old man without power of protest or remedy. His unexpressed intentions died with him, but the words, “I’ve something to add,” were the last he said.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE READING OF THE WILL.

Little Jock Trevor had never been a favorite with his father; there had been between them nothing of the caressing intercourse which generally exists between a very old father and a young child. He was not the pet or plaything of the old man, who had remorselessly sentenced him to as complete a separation as was possible from his sister. But, nevertheless, Jock had grown up literally at his father’s feet, and the world became suddenly very vacant and strange to him when the familiar figure was withdrawn. The little fellow did not understand life without this central point of stability and power in it; he had been used to the old man’s presence, to the half-comprehended talks which went on over his head, and to the background of that mysterious aged life filled with so many things beyond Jock’s understanding, which yet afforded depth and fullness to his strange perceptions of the mysterious world. He and his books had lain in the foreground in a varying atmosphere of visions, but behind had always been that pervading consciousness of something more important, a dimly apprehended world of fact. So it happened that, of all the household at the Terrace, it was little Jock who felt his father’s death the most deeply; his nerves had suffered from contact with that still more mysterious dying which he could not understand. He could not get out of his childish mind the impression made upon him by the sudden opening, in the dreadful silence of his father’s eyes. He who had spent all his life alone could be left alone no longer; he followed Lucy about wherever she went, holding tightly by her hand. There was no one to interfere, or to prevent the hitherto neglected child from becoming the chief interest of the house. He felt the loss far more, though it was to his immediate advantage, than Lucy did, who cried a little when she woke every morning at the recollection, but put on her crape with a certain melancholy pleasure in the completeness and “depth” of her mourning. Mrs. Ford, though she cried too, could not but admire and wonder at these black dresses covered with crape, which she felt it would have been a pleasure to old Mr. Trevor to see, so “deep” were they, and showing so much respect. It was almost like widows’ mourning, she declared, deeper far than that which ordinary mourners wore for a parent; but then, when you considered what Lucy had lost—and gained!

But little Jock got no satisfaction out of his hat-band; he found no comfort in anything but Lucy’s hand, which he clung to as his only anchor. He went to the funeral holding fast by her, half hidden in her dress. The by-standers were deeply touched by the sight of the young girl so composed and firm, and the poor little boy with his scared eyes. Many an eye was bent upon them as they stood by the grave, two creatures so close together that they looked but one, yet, as all the spectators knew, so far apart in reality, so unlike each other in their prospects. Was it possible that she, a girl, was to have everything and he nothing, people asked each other with indignation; and, notwithstanding the fact that all Farafield knew it was Lucilla Rainy’s money which made Lucy Trevor an heiress, still it would have shocked public opinion less if the boy had inherited the larger share, though he was, as old Trevor was so feelingly aware, an insult to Lucilla Rainy. So strong is prejudice that the moral sense of the population would have felt it less had poor Lucilla’s money been appropriated to make an “eldest son” of her successor’s child.