With a light on his face and a proud, trembling energy, he got to his feet. “It is the voice of my son,” he said. “Go, go, and bring him in.”
No one moved. But he was not to be disobeyed. His ears had been growing keener as he neared the subtle atmosphere of that brink where a man strips himself to the soul for a lonely voyaging, and he waved the woman to the door. “Wait,” he said, as her hand fluttered at the handle, “take him to another room. Prepare a supper such as we used to have. When it is ready I will come. But listen, and obey me. Do not tell him that I have but half a dozen hours of life. Go, and bring him in.”
It was as he said. She found the son, weak and fainting, fallen within the porch, a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and the husks of evil. They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened him with wine, while the woman wept over him, and at last set him at the loaded, well-lighted table. Then the seigneur came in, leaning his arm very lightly on that of Medallion, with a kingly air, and, greeting his son before them all as if they had parted yesterday, sat down. For two hours they sat there, and the seigneur talked gayly, with a color, and his fine eyes glowing; at last he rose, lifted his glass, and said: “The angel of patience is wise: I drink to my son.” He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over his face. He drank off the wine and, as he put the glass down, shivered, and fell back in his chair. “Three hours short, chemist,” he said, and smiled, and was still—forever.
STRANGER THAN FICTION.
THE BRONTËS AL FRESCO. THE BRONTËS AND THE GHOSTS.
THE DEVIL AND THE POTATO BLIGHT. THE GREAT
BRONTË FIGHT.
By Doctor William Wright.
I.
THE BRONTËS AL FRESCO.
I proceed with this chapter in the first person, though the story came to me at second-hand. My tutor, the Reverend W. McAllister, narrated it to me, in the words in which he had heard it from a youthful cousin, and I am able to give it almost in the same words and in the form in which I wrote it out as an exercise in composition.