Chapter VIII: ‘e’en at Turning O’ the Tide.’

Cynthia took her place at the Squire’s bedside, and assumed the care of the sick-room with as much calmness and self-possession as if she had been trained in a city hospital. That intense faith which made the two Wesleys so strong to resist all earthly opposition is the staff and anchor of all true followers in that wide school which they and Whitfield founded. Joshua’s young wife had no fear that her strength would fail her in this ordeal. Whatever strength she needed would be given to her.

It was not a pleasing or an easy task either, this attendance upon an irritable old man, who had served no apprenticeship to sickness, and to whom acute bodily pain was almost a new thing.

‘Mrs. Haggard has been so good as to come to nurse you, father,’ said Oswald, when he brought Cynthia to the bedside.

The Squire looked at the small gray figure--‘a shadow like an angel with bright hair’--doubtfully.

‘I don’t know that girl,’ he said. ‘Your mother was never so pretty.’

‘Will you let her nurse you, father?’ inquired Oswald.

‘I don’t want nursing; I only want to be let alone. Give me something to drink,’ said the Squire, with some inconsistency.

Cynthia examined the table by the bed, upon which empty medicine-bottles, discarded poultices, rags, and dirty tumblers were crowded in unseemly confusion. There was an uncorked bottle, containing half-a-tumbler of claret.

‘Does your father drink that wine?’ asked Cynthia, as she washed a tumbler swiftly, while the Squire expressed a general sense of discomfort by feeble moanings.

‘Yes; the doctor says he may have claret, but no other wine.’

Cynthia put the tumbler in the wasted hand, which clutched it with a tremulous eagerness, and supported the old man while he drank. She seemed to have a natural capacity and handiness which made these offices of charity easy to her.

‘Phœbe will get you anything you want,’ said Oswald, looking on helplessly.

Phœbe was standing on the other side of the bed, breathing hard, and staring at Mrs. Haggard, open-mouthed and open-eyed, as at a supernatural appearance.

But on being thus referred to she made a curtsy, and said she should be pleased to wait upon the lady.

‘And do you really think you shall be able to get on?’ asked Oswald.

‘I shall get on very nicely. You need not be anxious, Mr. Pentreath. It will be best for your father to be kept very quiet.’

‘Yes, I daresay. I’ll go to my own room. It’s on this floor, and I shall be at hand if my father should ask for me. You’ll send for me if he does, won’t you?’

‘Yes; Phœbe shall come for you.’

Oswald lingered by the bedside before going away, and bent over his father with that helpless feeling which robust youth has in the presence of suffering age. It can pity, but can hardly sympathise. If it could share the burden in any way, take half the pain, or all, it would do so; but it cannot measure or understand that agony.

‘How are you feeling now, father?’ asked the son.

‘I feel as if a wolf was gnawing me, that’s all,’ gasped the old man. ‘Go away. You only keep the air from me.’

Cynthia took a loose blanket from an arm-chair, and spread it over the Squire’s chest and shoulders, and then went quietly to the nearest window and opened it. The sweet cool night air blew in like a rush of refreshing waters upon a thirsty land.

‘That’s better,’ cried the old man.

‘You didn’t oughtter open the windows,’ said Phœbe; ‘the doctor said we was to keep un warm!’

Cynthia found a screen in one corner of the room, and this she placed as a guard against the keen edge of the draught. She had a conviction that the sufferer needed air, but she was not going to do anything rash or reckless.

‘Tell me what the doctor said about the leeches and the poultices, and everything that is to be done, Phœbe,’ she said.

At midnight Oswald looked into the room again. His father was sleeping the fitful painful slumber of disease. Phœbe was snoring by the fire. Cynthia was seated by the bedside, reading her pocket Bible by the dim candle-light. What a graceful figure it was in the neatly-fitting gray-stuff gown, the Puritan muslin kerchief crossed over the delicately-moulded bust, the little white cap giving a matronly air to the bright young face!

The room seemed changed somehow since Cynthia’s coming. The accumulated litter of the past week had been carried off. Everything was in its place--snowy linen on the bed, the hearth neatly swept, a small bright fire in the shining grate, a cheerful home-like air in the room which a few hours ago had looked so desolate. And all had been done quietly, with the least possible inconvenience to the invalid.

‘Has he been long asleep?’ asked Oswald.

‘About half an hour. I read to him a little before he went off.’

‘Out of your Bible?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he like your doing that?’

‘I think it soothed him.’

Oswald could hardly realise the idea of his father being instructed in the Scriptures by a Methodist preacher’s wife. It seemed a general upheaving of things.

This went on for many days and nights. The Squire’s life seemed to these patient watchers to tremble in the balance, though the doctor had made up his mind which way the balance was to turn at last. For many days and nights, without weariness or murmuring, Cynthia performed the painful tasks of the sick-room, and was full of love and care for this grim old man, who in his weakness seemed like a baby in her arms, and was fain to submit to be ministered to as a baby might have done. While caring for this poor mortal body of his, she was full of tender anxiety for his imperishable soul; and this disciple of Tom Paine was fain to listen to that ineffable story which even the most hardened unbeliever must hear with some touch of love and awe. Cynthia had not been taught to be doubtful of deathbed conversions; in her direct and positive creed this sinner--who, perhaps, in all his life had never done a good action or sacrificed a selfish desire--was as near the gates of heaven as the man of spotless life and active benevolence, could he but be brought to acknowledge his unworthiness, to believe in the all-atoning Sacrifice which had been made for him, to accept in implicit faith the pardon that God was for ever holding out to sinners. A Shibboleth, perhaps, this parrot-cry of instantaneous conversion, but this Shibboleth was to Cynthia a great reality.

Curious it must have seemed to the ear of the listener--had there been any one by--to hear this child fighting Satan beside that dying-bed; arguing with the unbelieving mind, sharpened and hardened by fifty-years mature worldliness; pleading, praying, repeating divinest messages of compassion and love. The Squire heard her patiently, which was much. One night she sang one of Wesley’s hymns in a low sweet voice. The sound pleased and soothed the sick man, and after this he often bade her sing to him. Oswald paced the corridor softly sometimes of an evening, listening to those clear and pure tones, which had a soothing influence for him as well as for his father.

‘I wish you would let my husband come and read to you, Mr. Pentreath,’ Cynthia ventured to say one afternoon when the Squire seemed a little better than usual, and quite free from pain.

‘Your husband! Who is he?’

‘Joshua Haggard.’

‘What, the Ranter? No; I’ll have none of his preaching. He’s a decent fellow, in his way, and has made money. My son is going to marry his daughter; but I’ll have no ranting. I won’t have fire and brimstone pelted at me on my deathbed. You may read what you like; it does no harm.’

‘I don’t think you know what kind of man my husband is,’ remonstrated Cynthia gently.

‘Don’t I! I know what field preachers are. You may hear ’em a mile off, raving about Sodom and Gomorrah and the worm that never dies. Haggard preached in the fields before he built that chapel of his. I’ll have none of his howling.’

This was discouraging; but the Established Church, which, represented by a port-winey vicar of the good old school, had called politely, during the Squire’s illness, to offer its ministrations, had also been kept at arm’s-length by Mr. Pentreath, who swore that no tithe-pig parson should cross the threshold of his chamber while he had sense enough to forbid him.

Oswald showed considerable anxiety about Cynthia’s comfort during this weary time of watching, and Joshua came to the Grange at least once a day to see for himself that his wife was not injuring her health by this work of charity. The acute inflammation had been conquered, chiefly by Cynthia’s nursing, as the doctor frankly acknowledged; but the foe left the citadel in so dilapidated a state, that the cessation of active disease was by no means a warrant for the patient’s recovery. The lamp flickered in the socket, and might at any moment be suddenly extinguished. The worn-out frame was not easily to be patched up by high feeding and stimulants, quinine or iron.

Once in every day Joshua Haggard came up to the long gallery, where the family portraits faced the searching north-west light, which showed every crack in the surface, for a brief interview with his young wife.

‘I’m afraid you are not getting enough rest, dearest,’ he said, turning the small pale face towards the spring sunshine, and looking at it with anxious scrutiny.

‘Yes, indeed, Joshua. I have some hours’ sleep every day, while Phœbe watches for me. I let her sleep at night, poor girl; for it seems so painful to her to keep her eyes open after the clock has struck ten.’

‘I am glad for you to do this good work, my love. I am proud of you. But remember that you have my happiness in charge. You must not sacrifice health even to duty--for my sake.’

He advanced this plea with a consciousness of its weakness, its selfishness.

‘I walk in the garden every day when it is fine,’ said Cynthia, anxious to reassure him as to her well-being. ‘Naomi and Oswald take me for a little walk every afternoon. It is such a happiness to me to see her, dear girl.’

‘Yes, she has told me about your walks together. It gratifies me to think of your being so united; I feared there was a want of sympathy on Naomi’s part.’

‘No, Joshua. She has always been good to me; but I think we have been more drawn together since the Squire’s illness. How glad I shall be when he gets well, and we can have the wedding! I want to see Naomi in that lovely gray silk. Does Dr. Harrow say that he will soon be well?’

‘Dr. Harrow does not seem very hopeful; he thinks his patient in a sadly weak state.’

‘But that racking cough is almost gone, and we shall soon make him strong.’

‘I hope so, dear; but there is a disease called old age. The Squire has lived a hard life. He did not spare himself in his youth, when he gave himself up to what the world calls pleasure, and he has not spared himself of late years, while he has been a slave to Mammon. The thread of life is worn very thin, my love.’

This was a disappointment to Cynthia, who had begun to hope for the Squire’s recovery. He was not an agreeable old man, but she had nursed him and cared for him, and she had grown in somewise attached to him. Oswald looked on wonderingly while she bent over the bed, soothing her charge with pretty tender speeches, supporting the grizzled head, holding the feverish hand, feeding the grim old sufferer as lovingly as if he had been a pet bird.

‘How good you are!’ he exclaimed one day. ‘Is it in the nature of all women to be so tender? I can just remember my mother nursing me in some small illness, and she was like you; but then I was her favourite son, the creature she loved best on earth, as they tell me. You come here to nurse a stranger, and yet your tenderness for him seems inexhaustible.’

‘I am so sorry for your poor father that I cannot help loving him,’ Cynthia answered simply.

‘Ah, I see; that is what the old saw means: “Pity is akin to love.”’

Those walks with Naomi and her lover were a delight to Cynthia at this time; so keen a delight, that it sometimes occurred to her this pleasure might be sinful, a snare and a temptation which she ought in somewise to resist; for Joshua’s teaching dwelt much upon snares, and the liability of weak human nature to be led astray by inclination.

After close confinement in the sick-room the very air of heaven was a source of rapture. The bright spring afternoon, the windy sky with patches of deepest blue shining through white fleecy clouds, and just one dark cloud overhead, holding the promise of an April shower; the daffodils waving with every gust; the yellow chestnut-buds just unfolding; the tender young ferns peeping up through the mossy ground in sheltered places, snake fern and adder fern--what could be more beautiful than the neglected old manor at such a season? Even the dark-red cattle had a friendly air, Cynthia thought, and looked at her with grave kindliness.

Never had Naomi been so kind or so loving to the poor little stepmother; and Oswald, who had seemed quite a remote unsympathetic personage a little while ago, came now as near as to be almost brotherly in his kindness--he was so grateful for Cynthia’s devotion to his sick father.

For the space of an hour by Oswald’s watch these three perambulated the path on the skirts of the wood, making fresh discoveries of Nature’s progress every day, and admiring the wonder of this gradual yet swift awakening of old Mother Earth after the dreary winter sleep. How quickly the flower-buds opened, and the little curled-up leaflets widened into leaves; here, under last year’s dead branches, are the ferns of next summer; the willows are yellow-green already; the mossy ground is enamelled with primroses and bluest violets.

‘Please God the poor old father picks up strength, we shall be married before the hawthorns are in flower,’ said Oswald to his betrothed.

Naomi’s only answer was a sigh; for her father had told her how little hope the doctor entertained of his patient’s recovery.

There was an appearance of improvement, however, at this time which deceived Oswald and Cynthia and the good-hearted drudge, Phœbe. The Squire’s cough was almost gone, though his breathing was still troublesome, and his wits somewhat given to wander in the pauses of wakefulness between his brief slumbers. He was able to be moved from his bed to the great easy-chair, in which spacious piece of furniture he looked like a living mummy, propped up with pillows. This seemed a great advance upon his condition of ten days ago; and Oswald fancied him on the high-road to recovery--an opinion shared by the patient himself, though in querulous moments he declared that he shouldn’t trouble anybody long, and that Oswald would soon have the handling of the estate.

‘And a nice mess he will make of it, for he knows no more of business than a baby,’ grumbled the Squire.

Seeing her charge so far restored, and believing his recovery an assured thing, despite her husband’s despondent view of the case, Cynthia was now anxious to return to her home duties. Those duties were not manifold, certainly, since Judith Haggard was the mainspring of the household machine; but Cynthia was at least her husband’s companion, and she knew that she was sorely missed by him. She had carefully instructed Phœbe in all the offices of the sick-room, and felt that she might now leave the Squire to that damsel’s care, with just a little supervision and assistance from Oswald, who was a light sleeper, and might look in upon the invalid now and then of a night to give him his wine or his medicine.

When, however, Mrs. Haggard ventured to hint at departure, the Squire’s distress was piteous to behold. Could she be so cruel as to talk of leaving him when but for her he should be in his grave? If she left him he should die. Phœbe nurse him, indeed! Phœbe would murder him, with her big rough hands and her clumsy ways. He might die in his bed at any hour, with not a soul to help him, while Phœbe was snoring like a pig by the fireside. That girl thought of nothing but sleeping and eating; she was a lump of selfishness, like all the rest of his servants.

The old man shed tears; and the tears of feeble age are sad to see. What could Cynthia do? The tender heart, in which love and pity were the ruling instincts, was moved to deepest compassion. She told her husband of the Squire’s distress, and he said stay.

‘Stay, my love, if you can bear the trial of witnessing the end. It will not be long.’

‘Does the doctor really think he will die?’

‘Yes, dear; the doctor is quite hopeless. Nothing less than a miracle could save him, he says, and God has ceased to work miracles for our worthless mortal bodies. His supernatural dealings are with our souls.’

‘Then I would not leave him on any account.’

‘You have never seen death, Cynthia. You are not afraid to face the end?’

‘No,’ she answered bravely; ‘I fear nothing since you have taught me where to put my trust.’

So Cynthia stayed and ministered to the departing sinner, and made these last days of his life sweeter to him than all the arid years of his widowhood, in which human affection had been as dead in him as if he had been one of those conical stones which antiquity chose for its gods. He had grown really attached to his fair young nurse, and submitted to her with a senile docility.

‘If I had had a daughter like you, my dear, I should have been a better man,’ he said.

‘You have had a good son, dear Mr. Pentreath.’

‘Yes, Oswald has never given me any trouble; but there’s not much in him--a young man to be drawn any way. I’m afraid he’ll spend my money like water. It’s a hard thing to know one must lie in one’s grave, not able to move a finger, while one’s property is being made ducks and drakes of. That’s the sting of death.’

‘No, no, dear friend; the sting of death is sin.’

‘And isn’t it sinful to fool away a fine estate?’ cried the Squire testily.

Wheeled close up to the glowing hearth in his big arm-chair, with a tumbler of warm negus, weak and harmless but soothing to the spirits, on the little table at his elbow, the Squire listened with great complacency to Cynthia’s Scripture-reading. If the Bible had been something less than it is, the keen old man would hardly have tolerated it, for he started with a strong prejudice in its disfavour. But the mighty Book compelled his attention, and seemed to appeal to him individually with a force his mortal weakness could not withstand.

Oswald now began to spend his afternoons in the sick-room, save that one hour which he spent out-of-doors with Cynthia and Naomi. The Squire liked to have him there, and was fond of calling his attention to certain passages of Scripture which, in the father’s mind, bore upon his son’s deficiencies. Oswald was a very patient listener to that pious reading, to those touching Wesleyan hymns which Cynthia used to sing in the gathering twilight. Joshua, while following that sect of Primitive Methodists and field preachers, which the Rev. Hugh Bourne had founded early in the century, had adopted the Wesleyan hymn-book, and differed from the modern Wesleyans chiefly in his closer adherence to the principles of their pious founder.

Sad, yet not unpleasing, days gliding gently by in that quiet chamber; a spacious bedroom, oak-panelled, with three deep-set windows, a carved mantelpiece, six feet high, and a curious old basket grate set round with blue and white Dutch tiles, Scriptural illustrations, to which the Squire referred now and then when Cynthia was reading.

‘David! ah! there he is, slaying Goliath--the third from the top. I remember when I was a boy I used to take him for Jack the Giant-killer. And David was a sinner, was he, though the Lord loved him? Ah, the Lord had need to be fond of me, for I’ve been a great sinner. I wonder if John Wilkes is in heaven?’

Sweet slow days, which hardly left a trace behind them, one being so like another, save a vague memory of a pleasing sadness. It seemed to Oswald, by and by, as if all his life were shut in this grave old room, and the outside world were something in which he had no part. Naomi noticed that his manner was dreamy and absent-minded at this time, a change which she ascribed to natural anxiety about his father.

* * * * *

It was about half way between midnight and morning, just when the night is coldest, most silent, most dismal, that the Squire called Cynthia to his bedside. He had been a little more restless than usual, and had wandered more between his snatches of broken sleep; had talked of his wild youth, naming old friends, old loves, long dead and half-forgotten.

‘What was the name of that fellow who supped with us at the Blue Posts?’ he asked eagerly. ‘You know, don’t you? a man with big whiskers and a belcher handkerchief--a fighting man.’

Cynthia knelt down by the bed and took his cold hand and chafed it gently. There was a sharp ring in his voice which she had never heard before.

‘That’s a good girl, Polly--yes, my hand’s very cold. You always had a good heart, Polly; but too fond of spending money. Yes, Polly, better marry the cheesemonger. He means well.’

Then the dull eyes turned suddenly on Cynthia with slowly returning consciousness.

‘Is it you, child? And you say God loves sinners?’

‘God loves all things that He has made,’ answered Cynthia earnestly; ‘and Christ died to save sinners. If you repent of all your sins, dear Mr. Pentreath, and believe in that atoning Sacrifice--’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t live a better life, and that I hadn’t a daughter like you,’ interrupted the Squire faintly; and letting his head sink softly upon Cynthia’s breast, he quietly loosened his feeble hold upon this mortal life, and passed into the unknown land beyond it.

Not at first did Cynthia know that this was death; and when the truth dawned upon her she uttered no cry, gave way to neither terror nor agitation, but gently laid the lifeless head upon the pillow, and went quietly to tell Oswald Pentreath that he was fatherless.

She was surprised, even in this awful moment, to see that his door was ajar and a light burning in his room. She knocked, and he answered at once, ‘Come in.’

‘Why has he been sitting up?’ she wondered.

He was sitting at a table with an open book before him, the candles burned down to the sockets of the old plated candlesticks, his hair and dress disordered as if he had been lying down, his eyes hollow and weary-looking. He started at sight of Cynthia, but did not move from his seat or change his dejected attitude, his elbows on the table, his head leaning on his hands.

‘What is the matter?’ he asked. ‘Is my father worse?’

‘All his pain is over, dear Oswald. God has taken him to His rest.’

‘And you were with him at the last--alone--he died in your arms?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a saint, an angel,’ cried Oswald passionately, brushing the tears from his eyes. ‘You came into this house as an angel of mercy--you brought light to my poor old father’s darkened mind. You made his last days the sweetest he had ever known. How can I ever forget your goodness?’

‘There is nothing for you to remember. I have only done my duty. How pale you look, Mr. Pentreath; this sudden loss has shocked you! He died so peacefully, and his last words were good. Is not that comforting?’

‘How could his thoughts be evil with an angel at his side? Poor old man! And he is gone? Yes, it is very sudden.’

‘Why were you sitting up all night? Had you a presentiment that the end was so near?’

‘No,’ with a bitter laugh. ‘I sat up because I have lost the knack of sleeping. My thoughts are too active, and I try to quiet them with philosophy; but I can no more read than I can sleep. My ideas travel in a circle, and always come back to the same point.’

‘You have been too anxious about your father,’ said Cynthia, with a look that was half pity, half wonder.

‘Yes; I am too devoted a son--that is my strong point.’

‘Will you go and see him?’

‘Yes; and there will be people to send for, I suppose, as soon as it is light?’

He opened a shutter. The stars were pale in a cold gray sky: daybreak was at hand, and in that chilly half light Oswald Pentreath’s haggard face looked like a ghost’s.

He followed Cynthia to the Squire’s room. Phœbe had roused the small household. The housekeeper was there already, and had begun the last dismal offices which life can render to death.

‘I laid out your sweet mother, Mr. Pentreath,’ faltered the crone. ‘She looked lovely in her coffin.’

The old butler had gone to the village to awaken the sexton, in order that the passing bell might speedily inform Combhaven that its seigneur had departed. Phœbe stood at the bottom of the great fourpost-bed, with her apron over her face, weeping as in duty bound--not that she had loved Squire Pentreath, but because it was proper to cry at a death or a funeral. To weep for her deceased master was an obligation which, although not expressly set forth in the Catechism, was implied in the general idea of doing her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call her. And if the Squire, although a hard man, should have happened to do the right thing in the way of legacies and mourning, it would be a comfort to remember having honoured him with these disinterested tears.

Oswald went round and kissed the cold brow of the dead, and then stood by the bedside, looking down at that unconscious clay, with a curious blank look in his own face, as if he knew not whether there were any further duty required of him. ‘He looked clean daft,’ the housekeeper said afterwards, when she and the old man-servant discussed the dismal scene over a substantial breakfast.

The shutters had been opened, and the candles burned with a yellow glare in the cold gray light. Cynthia looked at her neat silver watch, Joshua’s gift upon her wedding-morning.

‘Half-past five o’clock,’ she said. ‘I think I had better go home now, Mr. Pentreath. If Joshua should hear the passing bell, he would be coming to fetch me.’

‘Why not wait till he comes?’ asked Oswald.

‘I would rather save him the trouble. I can do no more good here.’

‘No; you can do no more good.’

She took her black mantle from a drawer, and put on her bonnet, and then went up to Oswald, who was still standing by the bed with that helpless absent look in his face.

‘Good-bye, Mr. Pentreath; I hope you will take comfort to your heart in this loss.’

‘I am coming with you. You cannot go home alone at this hour.’

‘Do you think I am afraid of the birds or the opening flowers?’ Cynthia asked.

‘You must not go alone.’

‘Come with me, if you like. Joshua will be glad to see you. You can stop to breakfast with us and see Naomi.’

Cynthia thought it a work of charity to take him away from that death-chamber. Joshua could comfort and advise him.

The morning air blew in coolly when Oswald softly opened the great hall-door. That clear cool light of dawn had a soothing influence; the solemn stillness of park and wood, the hollow murmur of yonder steel-gray sea, flecked with whitest foam, awed and yet comforted the heart, or so it seemed to Cynthia as she walked beside her silent companion. The bell began to toll as they came from the park into the wooded lane that led down to the bay and the open space at the beginning of the High-street. Each slow and dismal stroke made Cynthia shiver, as if each repetition were a surprise.

She made no attempt to console her companion during this lonely walk, which might be supposed a fitting opportunity for the expression of sympathy. If he needed human consolation, Joshua’s wisdom could better measure and administer to his necessity, she thought; and, next to Joshua, Naomi would be the best, the most natural consoler.

But to Cynthia’s surprise, when they came to the little green gate, Oswald refused to go in. The parlour shutters had been opened, and the household was evidently astir. She urged him to stay to breakfast, or at least to see Joshua.

‘No,’ he said; ‘it is very kind of you to wish it; but I am too much upset. I would rather go back. I shall have many things to arrange. I may be wanted.’

‘Joshua shall come to you, then,’ replied Cynthia. ‘Good-bye.’

She gave him her hand. He held it in both his own for a moment or two, looking at her with an expression full of sadness, half piteous, half pleading. He bent his head over the cold gloveless hand and kissed it. There were tears upon it when he let it go, and, with a scarcely audible blessing, he left Cynthia Haggard standing at the gate, and walked quickly back towards the Grange.