"My dear," Dr. Leach said, feeling as though he were speaking to a woman, and again stroking back his hair with a tender touch; "hadn"t you better see a clergyman? You are dying, you know."
"Did you send for them?" said Captain Cavendish, looking at him.
"For Blake and Darcy? Yes. But will I not send for a clergyman too?"
"No."
"Would you like me to read to you, then? There is a Bible on the table?"
"No."
He sank back into his lethargic indifference once more and looked at the lamp again. Dr. Leach sighed as he sat down beside him, to watch and wait for the coming of the others.
They came at last--Val Blake and Mr. Darcy--knowing all beforehand.
Their presence seemed to rouse him. Dr. Leach would have left the room, but the lawyer detained him.
"You may as well stay," he said, "it can make no difference to him now if all the world hears him. It is not his will--it is a confession he has to make."
Mr. Darcy was right. Strangely enough he wanted to do that one act of justice before he went out of life, and he seemed to make an effort to rally, and rouse himself to do it. The doctor gave him a stimulant, for he was perceptibly sinking, and the lawyer sat down to write out the broken sentences of that dying confession. It was not long; but it was long enough to triumphantly vindicate Charley Marsh before any court in the world, and just as it was completed the surgeon came. But a more terrible visitor was there too, before whom they held their breath in mute awe. Death stood terrible and invisible in their midst, and no word was spoken. They stood around the bed, pale and silent, and watched him go out of life with solemn awe at their hearts. There was no frightful death struggles--he died peacefully as a little child, but it was a fearful deathbed for all that. The soul of the unbeliever had gone to be judged. "G.o.d be merciful to him!" Dr. Leach had said, and they had all answered, "Amen." They drew the counterpane over the marble face, beautiful in death, and left the room together. All were pale, but the face of Val Blake was ghastly. He leaned against an open window, with a feeling of deadly sickness at his heart. It was all so awful, so suddenly awful; they, poor erring mortals, had judged and condemned him, and now he had gone before the Great Judge of all mankind--and the dark story had ended in the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet.
"Speak nothing but good of the dead," a pitiful old proverb says. "We were friends once," Val Blake thought. "I never want to speak of him again."
The body of the dead man was to be taken to his hotel. The surgeon and Mr. Darcy volunteered to arrange it, and Dr. Leach and Val left. The doctor had his patients to attend to, and Val was going to tell Cherrie.
She was his wife and ought to know, and Val remembered how she had loved the dead man once. But that love had died out long ago, under his cruel neglect; and though she cried when she heard the tragic end of the man to whom she had been bound by the mysterious tie of marriage, they were no very pa.s.sionate tears. And before the Nettleby family had quite learned to comprehend she was a wife they found that Mrs. Cherrie Cavendish was a widow!
Of all the shocks which Speckport had received within the last twenty years, there was none to equal this. Charley Marsh innocent, Captain Cavendish guilty! Cherrie Nettleby come back, his wife, his widow! And still it spread, and "still the wonder grew;" and it was like a play or a sensation novel, and the strange old proverb, "Truth is stranger than fiction," was on the tongues of all the wiseacres in the town.
And while the good people talked and exclaimed and wondered, and told the story over and over and over again to one another, and found it ever new, the dead man lay in his own elegant room in the hotel, and Cherrie, his widow, sat at his bedhead, feeling she had become all at once a heroine, and making the most of it.
Among the visitors to that darkened room were Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, Miss Blair, and Mr. Blake. Olive Wyndham, stately and beautiful, as ever, but paler and thinner, and less defiantly bright than of old, stood beside the bed of death, and looked down on the white, beautiful face of the dead man, with a strange, remorseful pang at her heart. How her soul bowed down before the disembodied spirit, and how touching was the marble beauty of that rigid face! If he had been old and ugly, perhaps people would not have felt so sadly pitiful about his dreadful fate; but he was so young and so handsome, that tears came into their eyes, and they forgot he had been a villain in life, and went away shaking their heads and saying, "Poor fellow! Poor fellow! It"s such a pity!"
Laura Blair--but Laura was always tender-hearted--cried as she looked at him, and thought how much she had liked him, and what pleasant hours they had spent together. He was very bad, of course, but still----Laura never could get any further, for the tears came so fast they choked her words.
She actually kissed Cherrie, who cried from sympathy, and Val Blake looked at her with a more tender glance than any one had ever seen in Val"s unsentimental eyes before.
The pony-phaeton from Redmon was in waiting at the hotel door. Mr.
Wyndham a.s.sisted the ladies in, and touched his hat as if in leave-taking.
"Are you not going back?" his wife asked, with strange timidity. She was in the habit now of speaking to him, and always in that strangely-hurried tone so foreign to her character.
"No," Mr. Wyndham said, "not just now. I shall return before dinner."
The carriage drove off. Mr. Wyndham took Val"s arm, lit a cigar, and strolled with him down Queen Street.
"It"s a very sad business!" he said, thoughtfully. "I am sorry for him, poor fellow!--one can"t help it; but, after all, I don"t know that it is not a merciful deliverance. The public disgrace, the imprisonment, the trial, the sentence, would have been to him far more terrible. There are worse things than death!"
He said the last words with a sudden bitterness that made Val look at him. "It"s his mother he is thinking of," said Mr. Blake to himself.
"Poor woman, she"s mad!"
"And it is really true that he confessed all before he died?" Mr.
Wyndham asked; "and exculpated, beyond all doubt, Charley Marsh?"
"Yes," said Val; "Charley Marsh is free to return to Speckport whenever he pleases now. I always knew he was innocent. I had a letter from him last night, too, inclosing one to his mother."
"Indeed!" Mr. Wyndham said, with a look of interest. "Is he well? Is he still in the army?"
"Yes; but his time is nearly up, it appears. I shall write to him to-day, and tell him to come back to us. I have a note--she called it a note, though it"s four sheets of paper closely written, and she sat up until three this morning to finish it--from Laura Blair, to inclose to him. If he is proof against four sheets of entreaty from a lady, all I can say to him will not avail much."
"Laura is a good little girl," said Mr. Wyndham, "and very much in earnest about all her friends. You ought to marry her, Blake."
"Eh!" said Mr. Blake, aghast.
"You ought to marry her," repeated Mr. Wyndham, as composedly as though he were saying, "You ought to smoke another cigar." "I am sure you will never come across one more suited to the purpose, if you live to be as old as Methuselah"s cat!"
"My dear Wyndham," expostulated Mr. Blake, rather shocked than otherwise, "what are you talking about? I give you my word I never thought of such a thing in my life."
"I don"t doubt it, in the least; but you know the proverb, "Better late than never.""
"Nonsense! What do I want with a wife?"
"A good deal, I should think; if only to save the trouble of boarding out, and securing some one to darn your stockings and b.u.t.ton your shirt-collar. Have you never indulged in any vision, O most prosaic of men! of a quiet domestic fireside, garnished on one side by yourself, with your feet in slippers, and on the other by a docile cat and a Mrs.
Blake?"
"Never!" responded Mr. Blake, emphatically.
"Then it"s time you did! Your hair"s turning gray, man, and your sister has left you! Come, rouse up, old fellow, and secure that little prize, Laura Blair, before some more ardent wooer bears her off, and leaves you in the lurch."
Mr. Blair stared at him.
"I say, Wyndham, what crotchet have you got in your head to-day? Marry Laura Blair! What should I marry her for, more than any one else?"
"Well, for pure artlessness, Mr. Blake," he said, "I"ll back you against the world! Why should you marry Laura Blair, indeed! Why you overgrown infant, because you are in love with her! That"s why!"
"Am I?" responded Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I didn"t know it. Is she in love with me, too?"
"Ask her," said Mr. Wyndham, still laughing. "Here we are at the office.
Good-morning to you."
"Won"t you come in?"
"Not this morning; I am going to Rosebush Cottage."
"Oh," said Val, hesitatingly, for it was an understood thing the subject was very painful, "how is your mother?"
"She is no better," said Mr. Wyndham, briefly. "Good-morning!"
Mr. Blake went into his sanctum, and the first thing he did was to write to Charley and tell him all.