‘Don’t you trust us, father?’ cried Ben, who was the eldest, with a thickness in his voice. ‘We’ll do as you have done. That will be our guide. But don’t think of us,—think of yourself now.’
‘You can’t do as I have done,’ said the father; ‘I started different. Perhaps it is too late now. Laurie, you will not blame me? And, Frank, my boy, it won’t make so much difference to you. Frank’s but a boy, and Laurie’s very soft-hearted—’ he said, as if to himself.
‘Then it is me you are afraid of, father?’ said Ben, whose face darkened in spite of himself. ‘If I have done anything to make you distrust me, God knows I did not mean it. Believe me now.’
‘The boy does not know,’ said Mr. Renton to himself, in a confused way; and then he added more loudly, ‘I don’t distrust you. You’ve always been a good lad; but it’s hard on you,—ay, it’s hard on Ben,—very hard;—I wonder if I should have done it!’ said the dying man. They could get very little more out of him as they stood round his bed, grave, sorrowful, and bewildered, looking for other words, for another kind of leave-taking. He bade them no farewell, but mused and murmured on about something he had done; and that it would be hard on Ben. It was not the kind of scene,—of conscious farewell and tender adieu,—the last words of the dying father, which we are so often told of; but perhaps it was a more usual state of mind at such a moment. His intelligence was lost in mists, from the coming end. Energy enough to be coherent had forsaken him. He could do nothing but go over in his enfeebled mind the last great idea that had taken possession of him. ‘Your mother had nothing to do with it,’ he said; ‘she knows no more than you do. And don’t think badly of me. It has all been so sudden. How was I to know that a week after,—is it a week?—without any time to think, I should have to die? It’s very strange,—very strange,’ he added, in a tone of musing, as if he were himself a spectator; ‘to go right away, you know, from one’s business, that one understands,—to——’
Then he paused, and they all paused with him, gazing, wondering, penetrated to the heart by that suggestion. Frank, who was the youngest, wept aloud. Mary Westbury, behind the curtain at one side of the bed, busied herself, noiselessly, in smoothing the bed-clothes, and arranging the drapery, so as to shade the patient’s eyes, with trembling hands, and trembling lips, and tears that dropped silently down her white cheeks. These two being the youngest were the most overcome. But there was no harshness or coldness about the bedside of the prosperous man. They had all perfect faith in him, and no fear that he was going out of the world leaving any thorns in their path. His words seemed to them as dreams. Why should they think badly of him? What could they ever have to forgive him? There had never been any mystery in the house, and it was easier to think their father’s mind was affected by the approach of death than to believe in any mystery now.
Mr. Renton died that night; and it was on a very sad and silent house that the moon rose—the same moon which he had watched shining on Laurie’s boat. Mrs. Renton, poor soul, shut herself up in her room, taking refuge in illness, as had been her habit all her life, with Mary nursing and weeping over her. Aunt Lydia, worn out with watching, went to bed as soon as ‘all was over.’ The lads were left alone. They huddled together in the library where all the shutters had been closed, and one lamp alone burned dimly on the table. Only last night there had still been floods of light and great windows open to the sky. They gathered about the table together, not knowing what to do. Nothing could be done that night. It was too soon to talk of plans, and of their altered life. They could not read anything that would have amused their minds; that would have been a sin against the proprieties of grief; so the poor fellows gathered round the dim lamp, and tried to talk, with now and then something that choked them climbing into their throats.
‘Have you any idea what he could mean by that,—about me,—about it being hard?’ said Ben, resting his head on both his hands, and gazing steadfastly with two dilated eyes into the light of the lamp.
‘I don’t think he could mean anything,’ said Laurie, ‘unless it was the responsibility. What else could it be?’
‘There must always have been the responsibility,’ said Ben. ‘He spoke as if it were something more.’
‘His mind was wandering,’ said Laurie; and then there was a long pause. It was broken by Frank with a sudden outburst.