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and let himself down inch by inch till he can’t let himself down any lower!”
“Has he done so?” asked Redlaw, glancing after him with the same uneasy action as before.
“Just exactly that, sir,” returned William Swidger, “as I’m told. He knows a little about medicine, sir, it seems; and having been wayfaring towards London with my unhappy brother that you see here,” Mr. William passed his coat-sleeve across his eyes, “and being lodging up stairs for the night — what I say, you see, is that strange companions come together here sometimes — he looked in to attend upon him, and came for us at his request. What a mournful spectacle, sir! But that’s where it is. It’s enough to kill my father!”
Redlaw looked up, at these words, and, recalling where he was and with whom, and the spell he carried with him — which his surprise had obscured — retired a little, hurriedly, debating with himself whether to shun the house that moment, or remain.
Yielding to a certain sullen doggedness, which it seemed to be a part of his condition to struggle with, he argued for remaining.
“Was it only yesterday,” he said, “when I observed the memory of this old man to be a tissue of sorrow and trouble, and shall I be afraid, to-night, to shake it? Are such remembrances as I can drive away, so precious to this dying man that I need fear for him? No! I’ll stay here.”
But he stayed in fear and trembling none the less for these words; and, shrouded in his black cloak with his face turned from them, stood away from the bedside, listening to what they said, as if he felt himself a demon in the place.
“Father!” murmured the sick man, rallying a little from stupor.
“My boy! My son George!” said old Philip.
“You spoke, just now, of my being mother’s favourite, long ago. It’s a dreadful thing to think now, of long ago!”
“No, no, no;” returned the old man. “Think of it. Don’t say it’s dreadful. It’s not dreadful to me, my son.”
“It cuts you to the heart, father.” For the old man’s tears were falling on him.
“Yes, yes,” said Philip, “so it does; but it does me good. It’s a heavy sorrow to think of that time, but it does me good, George. Oh, think of it too, think of it too, and your heart will be softened more and more! Where’s my son William? William, my boy, your mother loved him dearly to the last, and with her latest breath said, ‘Tell him I forgave him, blessed him, and prayed for him.’ Those were her words to me. I have never forgotten them, and I’m eighty-seven!”
“Father!” said the man upon the bed, “I am dying, I know. I am so far gone, that I can hardly speak, even of what my mind most runs on. Is there any hope for me beyond this bed?”
“There is hope,” returned the old man, “for all who are softened and penitent. There is hope for all such. Oh!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands and looking up, “I was thankful, only yesterday, that I could remember this unhappy son when he was an innocent child. But what a comfort it is, now, to think that even God himself has that remembrance of him!”
Redlaw spread his hands upon his face, and shrank, like a murderer.
“Ah!” feebly moaned the man upon the bed. “The waste since then, the waste of life since then!”
“But he was a child once,” said the old man. “He played with children. Before he lay down on his bed at night, and fell into his guiltless rest, he said his prayers at his poor mother’s knee. I have seen him do it, many a time; and seen her lay his head upon her breast, and kiss him. Sorrowful as it was to her and me, to think of this, when he went so wrong, and when our hopes and plans for him were all broken, this gave him still a hold upon us, that nothing else could have given. Oh, Father, so much better than the fathers upon earth! Oh, Father, so much more afflicted by the errors of Thy children! take this wanderer back! Not as he is, but as he was then, let him cry to Thee, as he has so often seemed to cry to us!”
As the old man lifted up his trembling hands, the son, for whom he made the supplication, laid his sinking head against him for support and comfort, as if he were indeed the child of whom he spoke.
When did man ever tremble, as Redlaw trembled, in the silence that ensued! He knew it must come upon them, knew that it was coming fast.
“My time is very short, my breath is shorter,” said the sick man, supporting himself on one arm, and with the other groping in the air, “and I remember there is something on my mind concerning the man who was here just now, Father and William — wait! — is there really anything in black, out there?”
“Yes, yes, it is real,” said his aged father.
“Is it a man?”
“What I say myself, George,” interposed his brother, bending kindly over him. “It’s Mr. Redlaw.”
“I thought I had dreamed of him. Ask him to come here.”
The Chemist, whiter than the dying man, appeared before him. Obedient to the motion of his hand, he sat upon the bed.
“It has been so ripped up, to-night, sir,” said the sick man, laying his hand upon his heart, with a look in which the mute, imploring agony of his condition was concentrated, “by the sight of my poor old father, and the thought of all the trouble I have been the cause of, and all the wrong and sorrow lying at my door, that — ”
Was it the extremity to which he had come, or was it the dawning of another change, that made him stop?
“ — that what I can do right, with my mind running on so much, so fast, I’ll try to do. There was another man here. Did you see him?”
Redlaw could not reply by any word; for when he saw that fatal sign he knew so well now, of the wandering hand upon the forehead, his voice died at his lips. But he made some indication of assent.
“He is penniless, hungry, and destitute. He is completely beaten down, and has no resource at all. Look after him! Lose no time! I know he has it in his mind to kill himself.”
It was working. It was on his face. His face was changing, hardening, deepening in all its shades, and losing all its sorrow.
“Don’t you remember? Don’t you know him?” he pursued.
He shut his face out for a moment, with the hand that again wandered over his forehead, and then it lowered on Redlaw, reckless, ruffianly, and callous.
“Why, d-n you!” he said, scowling round, “what have you been doing to me here! I have lived bold, and I mean to die bold. To the Devil with you!”
And so lay down upon his bed, and put his arms up, over his head and ears, as resolute from that time to keep out all access, and to die in his indifference.
If Redlaw had been struck by lightning, it could not have struck him from the bedside with a more tremendous shock. But the old man, who had left the bed while his son was speaking to him, now returning, avoided it quickly likewise, and with abhorrence.
“Where’s my boy William?” said the old man hurriedly. “William, come away from here. We’ll go home.”
“Home, father!” returned William. “Are you going to leave your own son?”
“Where’s my own son?” replied the old man.
“Where? why, there!”
“That’s no son of mine,” said Philip, trembling with resentment. “No such wretch as that, has any claim on me. My children are pleasant to look at, and they wait upon me, and get my meat and drink ready, and are useful to me. I’ve a right to it! I’m eighty-seven!”
“You’re old enough to be no older,” muttered William, looking at him grudgingly, with his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what good you are, myself. We could have a deal more pleasure without you.”
“My son, Mr. Redlaw!”