Part 67 (1/2)

And placing her hand in his, she repeated it slowly word for word. He watched her closely as she spoke, her eyes gazing candidly into his own.

Then he heaved a deep sigh.

”Thank you, my dear! That will do. G.o.d bless you! And now to bed!”

He rose somewhat unsteadily, and she saw he was very weak.

”Don't you feel so well, David?” she asked, anxiously. ”Would you like me to sit up with you?”

”No, no, my dear, no! All I want is a good sleep--a good long sleep. I'm only tired.”

She saw him into his room, and, according to her usual custom, put a handbell on the small table which was at the side of his bed. Charlie, trotting at her heels, suddenly began to whimper. She stooped and picked the little creature up in her arms.

”Mind you ring if you want me,” she said to Helmsley then,--”I'm just above you, and I can hear the least sound.”

He looked at her earnestly. His eyes were almost young in their brightness.

”G.o.d bless you, Mary!” he said--”You've been a good angel to me! I never quite believed in Heaven, but looking at you I know there is such a place--the place where you were born!”

She smiled--but her eyes were soft with unshed tears.

”You think too well of me, David,” she said. ”I'm not an angel--I wish I were! I'm only a very poor, ordinary sort of woman.”

”Are you?” he said, and smiled--”Well, think so, if it pleases you.

Good-night--and again G.o.d bless you!”

He patted the tiny head of the small Charlie, whom she held nestling against her breast.

”Good-night, Charlie!”

The little dog licked his hand and looked at him wistfully.

”Don't part with him, Mary!” he said, suddenly--”Let him always have a home with you!”

”Now, David! You really are tired out and over-melancholy! As if I should ever part with him!” And she kissed Charlie's silky head--”We'll all keep together! Good-night, David!”

”Good-night!” he answered. He watched her as she went through the doorway, holding the dog in her arms and turning back to smile at him over her shoulder--anon he listened to her footfall ascending the stairway to her own room--then, to her gentle movements to and fro above his bed--till presently all was silent. Silence--except for the measured plash of the sea, which he heard distinctly echoing up through the coombe from the sh.o.r.e. A great loneliness environed him--touched by a great awe. He felt himself to be a solitary soul in the midst of some vast desert, yet not without the consciousness that a mystic joy, an undreamed-of glory, was drawing near that should make that desert ”blossom like the rose.” He moved slowly and feebly to the window--against one-half of the latticed pane leaned a bunch of white roses, s.h.i.+ning with a soft pearl hue in the light of a lovely moon.

”It is a beautiful world!” he said, half aloud--”No one in his right mind could leave it without some regret!”

Then an inward voice seemed to whisper to him--

”You knew nothing of this world you call so beautiful before you entered it; may there not be another world still more beautiful of which you equally know nothing, but of which you are about to make an experience, all life being a process of continuous higher progress?”

And this idea now not only seemed to him possible but almost a certainty. For as our last Laureate expresses it:--

”Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.

'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant-- More life, and fuller, that I want!”

His brain was so active and his memory so clear that he was somewhat surprised to feel his body so feeble and aching, when at last he undressed, and lay down to sleep. He thought of many things--of his boyhood's home out in Virginia--of the stress and excitement of his business career--of his extraordinary successes, piled one on the top of the other--and then of the emptiness of it all!