Part 17 (1/2)

”Hus.h.!.+” says my poor Lord Viscount, lifting himself on his elbow and speaking faintly. ”'Twas a dispute about the cards--the cursed cards.

Harry my boy, are you wounded, too? G.o.d help thee! I loved thee, Harry, and thou must watch over my little Frank--and--and carry this little heart to my wife.”

And here my dear lord felt in his breast for a locket he wore there, and, in the act, fell back fainting.

We were all at this terrified, thinking him dead; but Esmond and Colonel Westbury bade the chairmen come into the field; and so my lord was carried to one Mr. Aimes, a surgeon, in Long Acre, who kept a bath, and there the house was wakened up, and the victim of this quarrel carried in.

My Lord Viscount was put to bed, and his wound looked to by the surgeon, who seemed both kind and skilful. When he had looked to my lord, he bandaged up Harry Esmond's hand (who, from loss of blood, had fainted too, in the house, and may have been some time unconscious); and when the young man came to himself, you may be sure he eagerly asked what news there were of his dear patron; on which the surgeon carried him to the room where the Lord Castlewood lay; who had already sent for a priest; and desired earnestly, they said, to speak with his kinsman. He was lying on a bed, very pale and ghastly, with that fixed, fatal look in his eyes, which betokens death; and faintly beckoning all the other persons away from him with his hand, and crying out ”Only Harry Esmond,”

the hand fell powerless down on the coverlet, as Harry came forward, and knelt down and kissed it.

”Thou art all but a priest, Harry,” my Lord Viscount gasped out, with a faint smile, and pressure of his cold hand. ”Are they all gone? Let me make thee a death-bed confession.”

And with sacred Death waiting, as it were, at the bed-foot, as an awful witness of his words, the poor dying soul gasped out his last wishes in respect of his family;--his humble profession of contrition for his faults;--and his charity towards the world he was leaving. Some things he said concerned Harry Esmond as much as they astonished him. And my Lord Viscount, sinking visibly, was in the midst of these strange confessions, when the ecclesiastic for whom my lord had sent, Mr.

Atterbury, arrived.

This gentleman had reached to no great church dignity as yet, but was only preacher at St. Bride's, drawing all the town thither by his eloquent sermons. He was G.o.dson to my lord, who had been pupil to his father; had paid a visit to Castlewood from Oxford more than once; and it was by his advice, I think, that Harry Esmond was sent to Cambridge, rather than to Oxford, of which place Mr. Atterbury, though a distinguished member, spoke but ill.

Our messenger found the good priest already at his books at five o'clock in the morning, and he followed the man eagerly to the house where my poor Lord Viscount lay--Esmond watching him, and taking his dying words from his mouth.

My lord, hearing of Mr. Atterbury's arrival, and squeezing Esmond's hand, asked to be alone with the priest; and Esmond left them there for this solemn interview. You may be sure that his own prayers and grief accompanied that dying benefactor. My lord had said to him that which confounded the young man--informed him of a secret which greatly concerned him. Indeed, after hearing it, he had had good cause for doubt and dismay; for mental anguish as well as resolution. While the colloquy between Mr. Atterbury and his dying penitent took place within, an immense contest of perplexity was agitating Lord Castlewood's young companion.

At the end of an hour--it may be more--Mr. Atterbury came out of the room, looking very hard at Esmond, and holding a paper.

”He is on the brink of G.o.d's awful judgment,” the priest whispered. ”He has made his breast clean to me. He forgives and believes, and makes rest.i.tution. Shall it be in public? Shall we call a witness to sign it?”

”G.o.d knows,” sobbed out the young man, ”my dearest lord has only done me kindness all his life.”

The priest put the paper into Esmond's hand. He looked at it. It swam before his eyes.

”'Tis a confession,” he said.

”'Tis as you please,” said Mr. Atterbury.

There was a fire in the room where the cloths were drying for the baths, and there lay a heap in a corner saturated with the blood of my dear lord's body. Esmond went to the fire, and threw the paper into it. 'Twas a great chimney with glazed Dutch tiles. How we remember such trifles at such awful moments!--the sc.r.a.p of the book that we have read in a great grief--the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel, or some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the Bagnio was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau's birthright. The burning paper lighted it up.

”'Tis only a confession, Mr. Atterbury,” said the young man. He leaned his head against the mantel-piece: a burst of tears came to his eyes.

They were the first he had shed as he sat by his lord, scared by this calamity, and more yet by what the poor dying gentleman had told him, and shocked to think that he should be the agent of bringing this double misfortune on those he loved best.

”Let us go to him,” said Mr. Esmond. And accordingly they went into the next chamber, where by this time, the dawn had broke, which showed my lord's poor pale face and wild appealing eyes, that wore that awful fatal look of coming dissolution. The surgeon was with him. He went into the chamber as Atterbury came out thence. My Lord Viscount turned round his sick eyes towards Esmond. It choked the other to hear that rattle in his throat.

”My Lord Viscount,” says Mr. Atterbury, ”Mr. Esmond wants no witnesses, and hath burned the paper.”

”My dearest master!” Esmond said, kneeling down, and taking his hand and kissing it.

My Lord Viscount sprang up in his bed, and flung his arms round Esmond.

”G.o.d bl--bless--” was all he said. The blood rushed from his mouth, deluging the young man. My dearest lord was no more. He was gone with a blessing on his lips, and love and repentance and kindness in his manly heart.