Chapter XXI: Sickness onto Death

Lady Emmeline arrived from London on the day following that on which the tragedy recorded in the last chapter was acted out, and with her came Mrs. Ellenham, who repaired, on hearing of her brother’s illness, by command of her husband, to the Euston Square railway station, where she proceeded _viâ_ Holyhead and Kingstown to Galway.

She had never been in Ireland from the day of her elopement, until she travelled back thither to see her brother on his death-bed, and she would not have gone then, only the law of Colonel Ellenham was as that of the Medes and Persians, and if he said, “go”—which he did in hopes of a bequest—there was no alternative but to pack up and depart.

Poor Lady Emmeline was inexpressibly shocked at sight of her husband. All the love she had once felt for him woke to live again in a moment, and she wept as genuine tears as she had ever shed in her life when he put up his white lips to kiss her.

They had lived latterly like cat and dog, but yet she once loved him, and she loved him now again when he lay dying, thinking, thinking not of her, but of many a more attractive woman and most of all of Jenny Bourke, whom he could see standing by the stream at the back of her brother’s cottage in all the beauty of her young loveliness, so innocent, so pure, so tender, and so true.

As for Susan, her brother saw her, but that was about all he would do. From others she heard the story of his unhappy son; from others she learned how her husband was mixed up in the matter.

“I would go back to London at once,” she said to Mr. Pryor, “if I were not afraid.” And accordingly, as she was afraid, she remained at Kincorth, keeping as much out of the way as possible, and generally conducting herself after a fashion as unlike all the fashions of Susan Drewitt as can well be imagined.

Matrimony, or perhaps the absence of matrimony for so many years, had tamed her effectually, and so she roamed about the place and looked at the improvements, and wondered if Brian would get Kincorth back again, and wrote long explanatory letters to her husband, and was considered a very quiet kind of lady by the servants.

As for Brian, he never left the sick man by day nor by night; and when the end drew very near, when every one saw that the sickness could never be cured, the disease never mastered; when it became a question not of weeks but of hours, Maxwell could not bear his cousin to leave him for an instant.

They had been at deadly feud once, but they were united now; they had been bitter enemies, but they were now fast friends; and it was Brian, who, when the last moments came, wiped the damp dews off Maxwell’s face, and held his hand while he passed through the portals of death.

Thus he departed. Many a time since, Brian Drewitt has recalled that scene.

It was noon—noon on a dull, damp November day.

The sick man had been lying all the morning thinking, thinking, and at last he began to talk.

“What’s that you are saying?” he broke out—and Brian knew from his tone that he was wandering—“That I made nothing? Give me those maps—reach me those plans;” and then he went on muttering some words which Brian could not catch. “There is The Headlands,” he said, in a louder key, “and Cherryfield, and the Calgillan estates. Isn’t it getting very dark, eh? What’s that? Are you there, Brian? Have I been asleep?”

“I don’t know. Do you feel tired?”

“No; but it is time I was getting to sleep—these winter nights are very dark. Ring for lights, Brian, I cannot bear this gloom.”

Brian knew then what was coming, and rose and put his strong arms about his cousin, and lifted him up a little.

“Can you see any better now?” he said.

“No; it is all darkness, all; Brian, is it night or day? Is it light to you?”

“It is day, Maxwell, though a very dull day, and I can see well enough.”

“Then this is death,” he said; and he stood at last face to face with the foe he had dreaded all his life.

There was an utter silence for a moment, during which Maxwell appeared to be solving some problem in his mind.

Over and over he appeared to be turning the question, while his dim eyes moved restlessly about, as though striving to catch some gleam, however feeble, of light.

“It grows darker,” he said, at last, and the cold dew of death was on his forehead.

“It grows darker—don’t leave me, Brian.” But Brian had no thought of leaving him.

He had lived without God, but he should not die without man—that was the idea which passed swiftly through his cousin’s mind.

“Do not let me go,” he murmured; and the hand which Brian held tight in his, grew cold as marble.

“I think I have made a great mistake,”—he spoke these words out so loudly, that Brian almost started, and they were the last he ever uttered. The problem was solved, the life-story finished, the purpose accomplished, the end of all earthly things reached; and with a sigh, Maxwell Drewitt, who had raised his head a little, fell back dead on his pillow.

That was the end.

He laboured and planted, he sowed and reaped, he got him great possessions, he amassed wealth in abundance, he accomplished what he said he would; he made the howling wilderness a smiling plain; he found Headlands a wretched piece of barren land, and he left it an Eden. Whatsoever his hand found to do, that he performed; whatsoever his mind planned, that he executed; and yet when he spoke the last words of his life—when he summed up the whole story of his endeavours and his successes—it proved to have been all “a great mistake.”

Pitiful! most pitiful! In his prime this man was taken away from among his treasures—from the place he had longed to possess—from the country of his birth—from the scenes he had loved to gaze over. What did it matter, then, whether he had been rich or poor, wealthy or indigent, lofty or lowly, peer or peasant?—what did it matter? what even in life had the lands and the houses, had the silver and the gold, profited him?

“I think I have made a great mistake.” Was that sentence spoken in time or in eternity? Was it uttered as his last farewell to earth, or when he had passed into the land of shadows? His soul was on the threshold of both worlds at the moment—to which world was the truth addressed? Was it spoken with the gloom he had complained of settling down upon him, or with light ineffable flooding the secrets of our humanity, and making all those things plain which here we see but as through a glass darkly?

Draw down the blinds, and tread lightly across the room, wherein there is no life left, but only the body which once held a soul.

Maxwell Drewitt has passed into that dim land which he so dreaded to face. He has gone away, and left his work to be taken up by another after him.

Never more may he walk by the sea shore, or stand under the arching trees that shade the avenue, or ride by lake and river, past mountains and through the valleys—never more for ever.

His works remain after him, but he himself is departed into that silent land where no echoes of the waves of time can reach the ears of the sleepers.

With great pomp and ceremony, with grandeur befitting his wealth and his influence, and the height to which he had climbed, they bore him to Eversbeg Abbey, and laid him down to rest.

There, so near to where he made his first start in life, he sleeps well—free from ambitious hopes, from regretful longings. From all dreads, from all alarms, he is delivered at last. The unquiet heart is still, the busy mind hushed into repose. The summer’s sun comes each year and falls warm and bright on the graves in Eversbeg; but the summer’s sun cannot quicken the cold body into life.

The great mountains rear their blue summits to heaven, the lakes ripple and ripple, the rivers flow onward to the sea, and the boulders and the blocks of granite lie scattered about on the hill sides—the great Atlantic beats against the iron-bound coast, and up the thousand bays the waves steal gently as ever—on that strange country through which Maxwell rode when he was still young, when he had life all before him, the moon looks down with as cold a light, playing as many fantastic tricks, creeping up the hills, and lying in the waters just as she did then.

And in the dancing sunlight Kincorth is beautiful as of old; but the man who coveted Kincorth,—who vowed to have it, who declared before God that neither woman nor devil should keep it from him,—where is he?

Lying with the rest of his kindred amid the ruins of Eversbeg, slumbering with the ivy trailing over his tomb, with the birds chattering all the day long above his head, dreamlessly, until the hour comes when he shall have to give an account of that life concerning which he said—he had made a great mistake.