Meredith died the next day, after a struggle longer and harder than could have been anticipated, and very differently from the manner in which, when he dictated his last message to the world, he expected to die. Few human creatures are strong enough, except in books, to march thus solemnly and statelily to the edge of the grave. The last event itself was twenty-four{277} hours later than the anxious watchers expected it to be, and wore them all out more utterly than any previous part of their patient’s lingering illness. He dictated his postscript, lying in great exhaustion, but solemn calm, not without a certain pomp of conscious grandeur, victorious over death and the grave. “That great angel whom men call the last enemy is standing by my bedside,” the dying man said, giving forth his last utterance slowly word by word. “In an hour I shall be clay and ashes. I send you, friends, this last message. Death is not terrible to those who love Christ. I feel a strength in me that is not my own. I had fears and doubts, but I have them no longer. The gates of heaven are opening. I close my eyes, for I can no longer see the lights of this world; when I open them again it will be to behold the face of my Lord. Amen. This I say to all the world with my last breath. For those who love Christ it is not hard to die.”

Colin, who wrote the words, trembled over them with a weakness like a woman’s; but Meredith’s broken and interrupted voice was shaken only by the last pangs of mortality, not by any faltering of the spirit. “I tell you, Colin, it is not hard,” he said, and smiled upon his friend, and composed himself to meet the last encounter; but such was not the end. The long night lingered on, and the dying man dozed a little, and woke again less dignified and composed. Then came the weary morning, with its dreadful daylight which made the heart sick, and then a long day of dying, terrible to behold, perhaps not so hard to bear. The two who were his brothers at this dreadful moment exercised all their power to keep Alice out of the room where this struggle was going on, but the gentle little girl was a faithful woman, and kept her place. He had had his moment of conscious victory, but now in its turn the human soul was vanquished. He became unconscious of their consoling presence, conscious of nothing but the awful restlessness, the intolerable languor and yet more intolerable nervous strength which kept him alive in spite of himself; and then the veiled and abstracted spirit awoke to matters of which, when in full possession of his faculties, Arthur had made no mention. He began to murmur strange words as he lay tossing in that last struggle. “Tell my father,” he said once or twice, but never finished the message. That death so clear and conscious, for which he had hoped, was not granted to him; and, when at last the deliverance came, even Alice, on her knees by the bedside, felt in her desolation a moment’s relief. It was almost dawn of the second morning{278} when they raised her up and led her tenderly away to Sora Antonia, the kind Italian woman, who waited outside. Colin was scarcely less overwhelmed than she. The young man sank down by the table where, on the previous night, he had been Arthur’s secretary, and almost fainting dropped his head upon the book which still lay open there. Twenty-four hours only of additional hard labour added on to the ending life; but it looked as many years to the young inexperienced spirit which had thus, for the first time, followed another, so far as a spectator can, through the valley of the shadow of death.

Lauderdale, who knew better, and upon whose greater strength this dreadful strain of watching had made a less visible impression, had to do for Colin what the kind peasant woman was doing for the desolate sister—to take him away from the chamber of death, and make him lie down, and put aside altogether his own sensations on behalf of the younger and more susceptible sufferer. All that had to be done fell on Lauderdale; he made the necessary arrangements with a self-command which nothing disturbed, and, when he could satisfy himself that both the young worn-out creatures, who were his children for the moment, had got the momentary solace of sleep, as was natural, he threw himself into poor Arthur’s arm-chair and pondered with a troubled countenance on all that might follow. There he too slept and dozed, as Sora Antonia went softly to and fro, moved with pity. She had said her rosary for Arthur many a morning, and had done all she could to interest in his behalf that good St. Antonio of Padua, who was so charitable, and perhaps might not be so particular about a matter of doctrine as St. Paul or St. Peter; for Sora Antonia was kind to the bottom of her heart, and could not bear to think of more than a thousand years or so of Purgatory for the poor young heretic. “The Signorino was English and knew no better,” she said to her patron saint—and comforted herself with the thought that the blessed Antonio would not fail to attend to her recommendation, and that she had done the best she could for her lodger. From the room where Alice slept the deep sleep of exhaustion the good woman made many voyages into the silent salone, where the shutters were closed upon the bare windows, though the triumphant sun streamed in at every crevice. She looked at Lauderdale, who dozed in the great chair, with curious looks of speculation and inquiry. He looked old and grey, thus sleeping in the daylight, and the traces of exhaustion in such a face as his were less touching than the lines in Alice’s gentle countenance or the{279} fading of Colin’s brightness. He was the only member of the party who looked responsible to the eyes of Sora Antonia; and already she had a little romance in hand, and wondered much whether this uncle, or elder brother, or guardian, would be favourable to her young people. Thus, while the three watchers found a moment’s sad rest after their long vigil, new hopes and thoughts of life already began to play about them unawares. The world will not stand still even to see the act of death accomplished; and the act of death itself, if Arthur was right in his hopes, had not that already opened its brighter side upon the solitary soul which had gone forth alone?

The day after everything was finally over was Sunday—the gayest and brightest of summer festal days. Colin and Lauderdale, who had on the day before carried their friend to his grave, met each other sadly at the table, where it was so strange to take up again the common thread of life as though Arthur Meredith had never had any share in it. It was Sunday under its brightest aspect; the village was very gay outside, and neither of them felt capable of introducing their sombre shadows into the flowery and sunny festa, the gaiety of which jarred upon their sadness; and they had no heart to go about their usual occupations within. When they had swallowed their coffee together, they withdrew from each other into different corners, and tried to read, which was the only employment possible. Lauderdale, for his part, in his listlessness and fatigue, went to rummage among some books which a former occupant had left, and brought from among them—the strangest choice for him to make—a French novel, a kind of production utterly unknown to him. The chances are, he had forgotten it was Sunday; for his Scotch prejudices, though he held them lightly in theory, still held him fast in practice. When, however, he had pored over it vaguely for half an hour (for reading French was a laborious amusement to the imperfectly instructed scholar), Colin was roused out of studies which he, too, pursued with a very divided attention, by a sudden noise, and saw the little yellow volume spin through the air out of his friend’s vigorous fingers, and drop ignominiously in a corner. “Me to be reading stuff like that!” said Lauderdale, with grim accents of self disgust; “and him maybe near to see what a fool is doing!” As he said this, he got up from his chair, and began to pace about the quiet, lonely room, violently endeavouring to recover the composure which he had not been able to preserve. Though he was older and stronger than the others, watching and grief had told upon his strength{280} also; and, in the glory of the summer morning which blazed all round and about, the soul of this wayfaring man grew sick within him. Something like a sob sounded into the silence. “I’m no asking if he’s happy,” Lauderdale burst forth; “I cannot feel as if I would esteem him the same if he felt nothing but joy to get away. You’re a’ infidels and unbelievers alike, with your happiness and your heaven. I’m no saying that it’s less than the supreme joy to see the face he hoped to see—but joy’s no inconsistent with pain. Will you tell me the callant, having a heart as you know he had, can think of us mourning for him and no care? Dinna speak of such inhuman imaginations to me.”

“No,” said Colin, softly. “But worst of all would be to think he was here,” the young man continued, after a pause, “unable to communicate with us anyhow, by whatsoever effort. Don’t think so, Lauderdale; that is the most inhuman imagination of all.”

“I’m no so clear of that,” said the philosopher, subduing his hasty steps; “nae doubt there would be a pang in it, especially when there was information like that to bestow; but it’s hard to tell, in our leemited condition, a’ the capabilities of a soul. It might be a friend close by, and no yoursel’, that put your best thought in your head, though you saw him not. I wouldna say that I would object to that. It’s all a question of temperament, and, maybe, age,” he continued, calming himself entirely down, and taking a seat beside Colin in the window. “The like of you expects response, and has no conception of life without it; but the like of me can be content without response,” said Colin’s guardian; and then he regarded his companion with eyes in which the love was veiled by a grave mist of meditation. “I would not object to take the charge of you in such a manner,” he said, slowly. “But it’s awfu’ easy to dream dreams,—if anything on this earth could but make a man know;”—and then there followed another pause. “He was awfu’ pleased to teach,” Lauderdale resumed, with an unsteady smile. “It’s strange to think what should hinder him speaking now, when he has such news to tell. I never could make it out, for my part. Whiles my mind inclines to the thought that it must be a peaceable sleep that wraps them a’ till the great day, which would account for the awfu’ silence; but there’s some things that go against that. This is what makes me most indignant at thae idiots with their spirit-rapping and gibberish. Does ony mortal with a heart within his bosom dare to think that, if Love doesna open their sealed lips, any power in the world can?” cried the philosopher, whose emotion again got beyond his con{281}trol. He got up again, and resumed his melancholy march up and down the room. “It’s an awfu’ marvel, beyond my reach,” he said, “when a word of communication would make a’ the difference, why it’s no permitted—if it were but to keep a heart from breaking here and there.”

“Perhaps it is our own fault,” said Colin; “perhaps flesh and blood shrinks more than we a............