Elsley smiled sadly, and began babbling--Yes, they would take a farm, and he would plough, and sow, and be of some use before he died; "But promise me one thing!" cried he, with sudden strength.
"What?"
"That you will go home and burn all the poetry--all the ma.n.u.scripts, and never let the children write a verse--a verse--when I am dead?" And his head sank back, and his jaw dropped.
"He is dead!" cried the poor impulsive creature, with a shriek which brought in Tom and Valencia.
"He is not dead, madam: but you must be very gentle with him, if we are to--"
Tom saw that there was little hope.
"I will do anything,--only save him!--save him! Mr. Thurnall, till I have atoned for all."
"You have little enough to atone for, madam," said Tom, as he busied himself about the sufferer. He saw that all would soon be over, and would have had Mrs. Vavasour withdraw: but she was so really good a nurse as long as she could control herself, that he could hardly spare her.
So they sat together by the sick-bed side, as the short hours pa.s.sed into the long, and the long hours into the short again, and the October dawn began to shine through the shutterless window.
A weary eventless night it was, a night as of many years, as worse and worse grew the weak frame; and Tom looked alternately at the heaving chest, and shortening breath, and rattling throat, and then at the pale still face of the lady.
"Better she should sit by (thought he), and watch him till she is tired out. It will come on her the more gently, after all. He will die at sunrise, as so many die."
At last be began gently feeling for Elsley"s pulse.
Her eye caught his movement, and she half sprang up; but at a gesture from him she sank quietly on her knees, holding her husband"s hand in her own.
Elsley turned toward her once, ere the film of death had fallen, and looked her full in the face, with his beautiful eyes full of love. Then the eyes paled and faded; but still they sought for her painfully long after she had buried her head in the coverlet, unable to bear the sight.
And so vanished away Elsley Vavasour, poet and genius, into his own place.
"Let us pray," said a deep voice from behind the curtain: it was Mark Armsworth"s. He had come over with the first dawn, to bring the ladies food; had slipped upstairs to ask what news, found the door open, and entered in time to see the last gasp.
Lucia kept her head still buried: and Tom, for the first time for many a year, knelt, as the old banker commended to G.o.d the soul of our dear brother just departing this life. Then Mark glided quietly downstairs, and Valencia, rising, tried to lead Mrs. Vavasour away.
But then broke out in all its wild pa.s.sion the Irish temperament. Let us pa.s.s it over; why try to earn a little credit by depicting the agony and the weakness of a sister?
At last Thurnall got her downstairs. Mark was there still, having sent off for his carriage. He quietly put her arm through his, led her off, worn out and unresisting, drove her home, delivered her and Valencia into Mary"s keeping, and then asked Tom to stay and sit with him.
"I hope I"ve no very bad conscience, boy; but Mary"s busy with the poor young thing, mere child she is, too, to go through such a night; and, somehow, I don"t like to be left alone after such a sight as that!"
"Tom!" said Mark, as they sat smoking in silence, after breakfast, in the study. "Tom!"
"Yes, sir!"
"That was an awful death-bed, Tom!"
Tom was silent.
"I don"t mean that he died hard, as we say; but so young, Tom. And I suppose poets" souls are worth something, like other people"s--perhaps more. I can"t understand "em; but my Mary seems to, and people, like her, who think a poet the finest thing in the world. I laugh at it all when I am jolly, and call it sentiment and cant: but I believe that they are nearer heaven than I am: though I think they don"t quite know where heaven is, nor where" (with a wicked wink, in spite of the sadness of his tone)--"where they themselves are either."
"I"ll tell you, sir. I have seen men enough die--we doctors are hardened to it: but I have seen unprofessional deaths--men we didn"t kill ourselves; I have seen men drowned, shot, hanged, run over, and worse deaths than that, sir, too;--and, somehow, I never felt any death like that man"s. Granted, he began by trying to set the world right, when he hadn"t yet set himself right; but wasn"t it some credit to see that the world was wrong?"
"I don"t know that. The world"s a very good world."
"To you and me; but there are men who have higher notions than I of what this world ought to be; and, for aught I know, they are right.
That Aberalva curate, Headley, had; and so had Briggs, in his own way.
I thought him once only a poor discontented devil, who quarrelled with his bread and b.u.t.ter because he hadn"t teeth to eat it with: but there was more in the fellow, c.o.xcomb as he was. "Tisn"t often that I let that croaking old bogy, Madam might have been, trouble me; but I cannot help thinking that if, fifteen years ago, I had listened to his vapourings more, and bullied him about them less, he might have been here still."
"You wouldn"t have been then. Well for you that you didn"t catch his fever."
"And write verses too? Don"t make me laugh, sir, on such a day as this; I always comfort myself with--"it"s no business of mine:" but, somehow, I can"t do so just now." And Tom sat silent, more softened than he had been for years.
"Let"s talk of something else," said Mark at last. "You had the cholera very bad down there, I hear?"
"Oh, sharp, but short," said Tom, who disliked any subject which brought Grace to his mind.
"Any on my lord"s estate with the queer name?"
"Not a case. We stopped the devil out there, thanks to his lordship."
"So did we here. We were very near in for it, though, I fancy.--At least, I chose to fancy so--thought it a good opportunity to clean Whitbury once for all."
"It"s just like you. Well?"
"Well, I offered the Town-council to drain the whole town at my own expense, if they"d let me have the sewage. And that only made things worse; for as soon as the beggars found out the sewage was worth anything, they were down on me, as if I wanted to do them--I, Mark Armsworth!--and would sooner let half the town rot with an epidemic, than have reason to fancy I"d made any money out of them. So a pretty fight I had, for half-a-dozen meetings, till I called in my lord; and, sir, he came down by the next express, like a trump, all the way from town, and gave them such a piece of his mind--was going to have the Board of Health down, and turn on the Government tap, commissioners and all, and cost "em hundreds: till the fellows shook in their shoes;--and so I conquered, and here we are, as clean as a nut,--and a fig for the cholera!--except down in Water-lane, which I don"t know what to do with; for if tradesmen will run up houses on spec in a water-meadow, who can stop them? There ought to be a law for it, say I; but I say a good many things in the twelve months that n.o.body minds. But, my dear boy, if one man in a town has pluck and money, he may do it. It"ll cost him a few: I"ve had to pay the main part myself, after all: but I suppose G.o.d will make it up to a man somehow. That"s old Mark"s faith, at least. Now I want to talk to you about yourself. My lord comes into town to-day, and you must see him."
"Why, then? He can"t help me with the Bashi-bazouks, can he?"
"Bashi-fiddles! I say, Tom, the more I think over it, the more it won"t do. It"s throwing yourself away. They say that Turkish contingent is getting on terribly ill."
"More need of me to make them well."
"Hang it--I mean--hasn"t justice done it, and so on. The papers are full of it."
"Well," quoth Tom, "and why should it?"
"Why, man alive, if England spends all this money on the men, she ought to do her duty by them."
"I don"t see that. As Pecksniff says, "if England expects every man to do his duty, she"s very sanguine, and will be much disappointed." They don"t intend to do their duty by her, any more than I do; so why should she do her duty by them?"
"Don"t intend to do your duty?"
"I"m going out because England"s money is necessary to me; and England hires me because my skill is necessary to her. I didn"t think of duty when I settled to go, and why should she? I"ll get all out of her I can in the way of pay and practice, and she may get all she can out of me in the way of work. As for being ill-used, I never expect to be anything else in this life. I"m sure I don"t care; and I"m sure she don"t; so live and let live; talk plain truth, and leave Bunk.u.m for right honourables who keep their places thereby. Give me another weed."
"Queer old philosopher you are; but go you shan"t!"
"Go I will, sir; don"t stop me. I"ve my reasons, and they"re good ones enough."