“Perhaps I ought to have rung the bell for others to be present. But his lordship was always shy, you know, miss; and with none of his kindred left, and no wife to say 'good-by' to him, right or wrong I resolved alone to see him depart to his everlasting rest. And people may talk about hirelings, but I think nobody loved him as I did.”
Here Mrs. Price broke fairly down, and I could not help admiring her. To a faithful servant's humility and duty she had added a woman's pure attachment to one more gifted than herself, and ruined for life by her own sex. But she fell away frightened and ashamed beneath my look, as if I had caught her in sacrilege.
“Well, miss, we all must come and go,” she began again, rather clumsily; “and, good and great as he was, his lordship has left few to mourn for him. Only the birds and beasts and animals that he was so good to; they will miss him, if men don't. There came one of his favorite pigeons, white as snow all over, and sat on the sill of the window, and cooed, and arched up its neck for his fingers. And he tried to put his fingers out, but they were ice already. Whether that or something else brought home his thoughts, who knows, miss? but he seemed to mix the pigeon up with some of his own experience.
“'Say that I have forgiven her, if ever she did harm to me,' he whispered, without moving lips. 'Times and times, when I was young, I was not always steady;' and then he seemed to wander in his mind among old places; and he would have laughed at something if his voice had been sufficient.
“'Bitter grief and pain shall never come again,' he seemed to breathe, with a calm, soft smile, like a child with its rhyme about the rain when the sun breaks out; and sure enough, the sun upon the quilt above his heart was shining, as if there could be no more clouds. Then he whispered a few short words to the Lord, more in the way of thanks than prayer, and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord, or with some good spirit soothing them. And when or how his sleep passed from this world into the other there was scarcely the flutter of a nerve to show. There he lies, like an image of happiness. Will you come and see him?”
I followed her to the bedroom, and am very glad that I did so; for it showed me the bliss of a good man's rest, and took away my fear of death.
CHAPTER LI
LIFE SINISTER
When business and the little cares of earthly life awoke again, every one told me (to my great surprise and no small terror at first, but soon to increasing acquiescence) that I was now the mistress of the fair estates of Castlewood, and, the male line being extinct, might claim the barony, if so pleased me; for that, upon default of male heirs, descended by the spindle. And as to the property, with or without any will of the late Lord Castlewood, the greater part would descend to me under unbarred settlement, which he was not known to have meddled with. On the contrary, he confirmed by his last will the settlement—which they told me was quite needless—and left me all that he had to leave, except about a thousand pounds distributed in legacies. A private letter to me was sealed up with his will, which, of course, it would not behoove me to make public. But thus much—since our family history is, alas! so notorious—in duty to him I should declare. He begged me, if his poor lost wife—of whom he had never spoken to me—should re-appear and need it, to pay her a certain yearly sum, which I thought a great deal too much for her, but resolved to obey him exactly.