Holden with the Cords

by W. M. L. Jay

"Brandy!" he finally gasped, through his set teeth.

Rue motioned to one of the women in waiting to bring some. Bergan put his hand on her arm. "Surely you will not give it to him now," said he, impressively.

"The doctor said he must have a little, now and then," she answered.

But before the glass could be put to his lips, he groaned, shuddered from head to foot, and fell back on the pillow, with his eyes rolled up in his head, his hands clenched, and a dark froth issuing from, between his shut teeth. He was dead.

XI.
AFTER MANY DAYS.

There was a sudden silence—the shadow of God's hand. In it the lately agonized, writhing body lay at peace, the anxious spectators stood awed and motionless. Yet this silence was more voiceful than any sound,—full of solemn questionings and more solemn answers, subtle suggestions, grave warnings, and momentous intimations. Of the value and the valuelessness of life, of the night and the morning of death, of the character and the import of the Hereafter,—on all these topics it discoursed more eloquently than the most silvery of oratorical tongues.

It had also its more commonplace and definite purport to the simple-minded dependents gathered in the gloom of the broad gallery and the black oaken staircase; which was no sooner fully apprehended, than the sound of weeping was heard among them,—though not noisily demonstrative, according to the African wont, for their awe of their late master had been greater than their affection, and was in nowise diminished by the knowledge of the dread change that had come upon him. It was genuine sorrow, nevertheless, for, though he had been a hard master, of late, most of them remembered when he had been kinder; and, at the worst, he had not been without gleams of good humor and leniency, upon which their minds now dwelt willingly and tenderly. Some few gray heads, too, there were among them, who recollected the grace and promise of his youth, and how proud they had been of their gay, handsome, generous, high-spirited master; and these, striving to forget that the promise had not been kept, or to set down its failure to adverse fate rather than wilful shortcoming, crowded the doorway, or stole in pairs to the foot of the bed, and looked through tears at the dead face, and whispered to each other that something of its youth had come back to it;—the soul, as it took its departure, had stamped the features with their original nobility and grace. And then they stole out, to prompt each other's memories with anecdotes of that vanished youth, and to dilate the eyes of their juniors with descriptions of the ancient splendors and hospitalities of the desolate old Hall;—the banquets that had been served in the dusky dining-room, the gay measures that had been trodden in the long parlor, the wedding-trains and the funeral processions that had passed through the great door; and, finally, of the ghosts that still walk the empty rooms, and may be expected to be seen stalking through the long passages to-night, or holding solemn conclave around the deserted tabernacle of the latest comer among them.

Hark! is not that the sound of footsteps, falling airily, yet heavily, too, in some distant chamber? And there, in the upper gallery, is certainly the rustle of the supernaturally stiff silk robe of the first Lady Bergan, who was found dead in her bed, so many years ago! And now creaks the door at the end of the wing, through which old Sir Harry is wont to march majestically forth, sword in hand, to take vengeance on any degenerate scion of the house that he encounters in his path! This last apparition is too much for their nerves. They shrink together, and flee noiselessly to their cabins, hearing the footsteps of the angry knight following them all the way, and leaving the old house untenanted save by the-ghosts, and the few faithful watchers in the death-chamber.

Rue is kneeling by the corpse. She has closed the eyes—sightless as her own;—she has smoothed back the disordered hair; she has pressed the lips together over the set teeth; now she is passing her withered hand gently over the blind features, thinking more of the baby that she nursed, the child that she petted and spoiled, and the youth that she admired and loved, than of the middle-aged man that she had served with her best strength, or the elderly one that she had stood by so faithfully, striving in vain to hold him back from his evil ways. Finally, she touches the cold lips with her own.