“I should think so,” quoth the Squire, who had quite recovered his good-humour. “And the Parson is as soft as buttermilk. We must be firm here—firm, sir.” And the Squire struck the end of his stick on the pavement, nodded to Randal, and went on to Mayfair as sturdily and as confidently as if to purchase a prize cow at a cattle show.
CHAPTER XII.
“Bring the light nearer,” said John Burley—“nearer still.”
Leonard obeyed, and placed the candle on a little table by the sick man’s bedside.
Burley’s mind was partially wandering; but there was method in his madness. Horace Walpole said that “his stomach would survive all the rest of him.” That which in Burley survived the last was his quaint wild genius. He looked wistfully at the still flame of the candle: “It lives ever in the air!” said he.
“What lives ever?”
Burley’s voice swelled—“Light!” He turned from Leonard, and again contemplated the little flame. “In the fixed star, in the Will-o’-the-wisp, in the great sun that illumes half a world, or the farthing rushlight by which the ragged student strains his eyes—still the same flower of the elements. Light in the universe, thought in the soul—ay—ay—Go on with the simile. My head swims. Extinguish the light! You cannot; fool, it vanishes from your eye, but it is still in the space. Worlds must perish, suns shrivel up, matter and spirit both fall into nothingness, before the combinations whose union makes that little flame, which the breath of a babe can restore to darkness, shall lose the power to unite into light once more. Lose the power!—no, the necessity:—it is the one Must in creation. Ay, ay, very dark riddles grow clear now—now when I could not cast up an addition sum in the baker’s bill! What wise man denied that two and two made four? Do they not make four? I can’t answer him. But I could answer a question that some wise men have contrived to make much knottier.” He smiled softly, and turned his face for some minutes to the wall.
This was the second night on which Leonard had watched by his bedside, and Burley’s state had grown rapidly worse. He could not last many days, perhaps many hours. But he had evinced an emotion beyond mere delight at seeing Leonard again. He had since then been calmer, more himself. “I feared I might have ruined you by my bad example,” he said, with a touch of humour that became pathos as he added, “That idea preyed on me.”
“No, no; you did me great good.”
“Say that—say it often,” said Burley, earnestly; “it makes my heart feel so light.”