CHAPTER XVIII.THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
Breakfast at the Forrest House had been late that morning, for the judge, who was usually so prompt, did not make his appearance, and Rosamond waited for him until the clock struck eight. Then, as the minute-hand crept on and he still did not come down, she went to the door of his room and knocked, but there came no answer, though she thought she heard a faint sound like the moan of some one in pain. Knocking still louder, with her ear to the keyhole, she called, “Judge Forrest, are you awake? Do you hear me? Do you know how late it is?”
This time there was an effort to reply, and without waiting for anything further, Rosamond went unhesitatingly into the room. The shutters were closed and the heavy curtains drawn, but even in the darkness Rossie could discern the white, unnatural face upon the pillow, and the eyes which met hers so appealingly as the judge tried in vain to speak, for the blue lips gave forth only an unmeaning sound, which might have meant anything. There was a loud call for help, and in a moment the room was full of the terrified servants, who ran over and against each other in their frantic haste to execute Miss Rossie’s orders, given so rapidly.
“Open the shutters and windows wide and let in the air, and bring some camphor, and hartshorn, and ice-water, quick, and somebody go for the doctor and Miss Belknap as soon as they can, and don’t make such a noise with your crying, it’s only a,—a,—a fit of some kind; he will soon be better,” Rossie said, with a forced calmness, as she bent over the helpless man and rubbed and chafed the hands which, the moment she let go of them, fell with a thud upon the bed-clothes, where they lay helpless, nerveless, dead, as it were, to all action or feeling; and while she rubbed and worked over him and asked him questions he could not answer, his eyes followed her constantly, as if with some wish the dumb lips could not express.
The doctor was soon there, but a glance at his patient convinced him that his services were of no avail, except to make the sufferer a little more comfortable. It was partly apoplexy, partly paralysis, induced by some great excitement or over-work, he said to Rosamond, whom he questioned closely as to the judge’s appearance the previous night. He had come home about four o’clock, Rosamond said, and eaten a very hearty dinner, and drank more wine than usual. She noticed, too, that his face was very red, and that he smoked a long time after dinner before he came into the parlor where she was getting her lessons. He had asked her to play some old-fashioned tunes, which he liked best, he said, because they took him back to the time when he was a boy at home in Carolina. Then he told her of his home and his mother, and talked of his dead wife, and said he hoped Forrest House would one day have a mistress as sweet and good as she was. When at last he said good-night, he kissed her forehead and said, “My child; you are all I have left me now. Heaven bless you!” then he went up stairs, and Rossie knew nothing more till she found him in the morning.
There was no hope; it was merely a matter of a few days at most, the doctor said; and then he asked where Everard was, saying, he ought to be sent for. This was to Beatrice and Rossie both, after the former had arrived and before she had seen the judge. The two girls exchanged glances, and Beatrice was the first to speak.
“Everard left home for Cincinnati early yesterday morning,” she said, “but I know his address, and will telegraph at once.”
“Very well,” the doctor replied, looking curiously at her, for he had heard a flying rumor of something wrong at the Forrest House, which had driven the heir away.
Accordingly, a telegram was sent to the Spencer House, Cincinnati, to the effect that Judge Forrest was dangerously ill, and Everard must come immediately.
“Not here, and has not been here,” was the answer telegraphed back; and then a message went to the Galt House, in Louisville, where Everard always stopped, but that too elicited the answer “Not here.”
Where was he, then,—the outcast son,—when hisfather lay dying, with that white, scared, troubled look upon his face, and that vain effort to speak and let his wishes be known. Dead his body was already, so far as power to move was concerned, but the mind was apparently unimpaired, and expressed itself in the agonized expression of his face, and the entreating, beseeching, pleading look of the dim eyes which followed Rosamond so constantly and seemed trying to communicate with her.
“There is something he wants,” Rossie said to Beatrice, who shared her vigils, “and if I could only guess what it was;” then, suddenly starting up, she hurried to his side, and taking the poor, palsied hand in hers rubbed and caressed it pityingly, and smoothing his thin hair, said to him, “Judge Forrest, you want something, and I can’t guess what it is, unless,—unless—;” she hesitated a moment, for as yet Everard’s name had not been mentioned in his hearing, and she did not know what the effect might be; but the eyes, fastened so eagerly upon her, seemed challenging her to go on, and at last she said,—“unless it is Mr. Everard. Has it anything to do with him?”
Oh, how hard the lips tried to articulate, but they only quivered convulsively and gave forth a little moaning sound, but in the lighting up of the eager eyes, which grew larger and brighter, Rossie thought she read the answer, and emboldened by it went on to say that they had telegraphed to Cincinnati and Louisville both, and had that morning dispatched a message to Memphis and New Orleans.
“We shall surely find him somewhere,” she continued, “and he will come at once. I do not think he was angry with you when he went away, he spoke so kindly of you.”
Again the lips tried to speak, but could not; only the eyes fastened themselves wistfully upon Rosamond, following her wherever she went, and as if by some subtle magnetism bringing her back to the bedside, where she stayed almost constantly. How those wide-open, never-sleeping eyes haunted and troubled her and made her at last almost afraid to stay alone with them, and meet their constant gaze! Beatrice had been taken sick, and was unable to come to the Forrest House, and the judge seemed so much more quiet when Rossie was sittingwhere he could look her straight in the face, that the man hired to nurse him staid mostly in the adjoining room, and Rossie kept her vigils alone, wearying herself with the constantly recurring question as to what it was the sick man wished to tell her. Something, sure, and something important, too,—for as the days went on, and there came no tidings of his son, the eyes grew larger, and seemed at times about to leap from their sockets, to escape the horror and remorse so plainly written in them. What was it he wished to say? What was it troubling the old man so, and forcing out the great drops of sweat about his lips and forehead, and making his face a wonder to look upon? Rosamond felt sometimes as if she should go mad herself sitting by him, with those wild eyes watching her so intently that if she moved away for a moment they called her back by their strange power, and compelled her not only to sit down again by them, but to look straight into their depths, where the unspeakable trouble lay struggling to free itself.
“Judge Forrest,” Rossie said to him the fifth day after his attack, “you wish to tell me something and you cannot, but perhaps I can guess by mentioning ever so many things. I’ll try, and if you mean no look straight at me as you are looking now; if you mean yes, turn your eyes to the window, or shut them, as you choose. Do you understand me?”
There was the shadow of a smile on the wan face, and the heavy eyelids closed, in token that he did comprehend. Rossie knew the judge was dying, that at the most only a few days more were his, and ought not some one to tell him? Was it right to let that fierce, turbulent spirit launch out upon the great sea of eternity unwarned?
“Oh, if I was only good, I might help him, perhaps,” she thought; “at any rate he ought to know, and maybe it would make him kinder toward Everard,” for it was of him she meant to speak, through this novel channel of communication between herself and the sick man.
She must have the father’s forgiveness with which to comfort the son, and with death staring him in the face he would not withhold it; so she said to him:
“You are very sick, Judge Forrest; you know that, don’t you?”
The eyes went slowly to the window and back again, while she continued in her plain, outspoken way:
“Do you think I ought to tell you if you are going to die?”
There was a momentary spasm of terror on the face, a look such as a child has when shrinking from the rod, and then the eyes went to the window and back to Rossie, who said:
“We hope for the best, but the case is very bad, and if you do not see Mr. Everard again shall I tell him you forgive him, and were sorry?”
Quick as lightning the affirmative answer agreed upon between them was given, and in great delight Rossie exclaimed, “I am so glad, for that is what you have tried so hard to tell me. You wish me to say this to Mr. Everard, and I will. Is that all?”
This time the eyes did not move, but looked into hers with such an earnest, beseeching expression, that she knew there was more to come. Question after question followed, but the eyes never left her face, and she could see the pupils dilate and the color deepen in them, as they seemed burning themselves into hers.
“What is it? What can it be?” she asked, despairingly. “Does it concern Mr. Everard in any way?”
“Yes,” was the eye answer quickly given, and then Rosamond guessed everything she could think of, the possible and impossible, but the bright eyes kept their steady gaze upon her until, thinking of Joe Fleming, she asked, “Is somebody else concerned in it?”
“Yes,” was the response, and not willing to introduce Joe too soon, Rossie said: “Is it the servants?”
“No.”
“Is it Beatrice?”
“No.”
“Is it I?”
She had no thought it was, and was astonished when the eyes went over to the window in token that it was.
“Is it something that I can do?” she asked, and the eyes seemed to leap from her face to the window.
“And shall I some time know what it is?”
Again the emphatic “yes,” while the sweat ran like rain down his face.
“Then, Judge Forrest,” and Rossie put on herwisest, oldest air, “you may be certain I’ll do it, for I promise you solemnly that if anything comes to light which you left undone, and which I can do, I’ll do it, sure.”
The eyes fairly danced now, and there was no mistaking the joy shining in them, while the lips moved as if in blessing upon the girl, who took the helpless hand and found there was a slight pressure of the limp, lifeless fingers which clung to hers.
“Is that all? have you made me understand?” she asked, and he answered yes, and this time his eyes did not come back to her face, but closed wearily, and in a few moments he was sleeping quietly, as he had not done before since his illness.
The sleep did him good, and he was far less restless after he awoke, and there was a more natural look in his face, but nothing could prolong his life, which hung upon a thread, and might go out at any time. There was no more following Rossie with his eyes, though he wanted her with him constantly, and seemed happier when she was sitting by him and ministering to his comfort. Sometimes he seemed to be in a deep reverie, with his eyes fixed on vacancy, and the great sweat-drops standing thickly on his face from the intensity of his thought. Of what was he thinking as he lay there so helpless? of the wasted years which he could not now reclaim? of sins committed and unforgiven in the days which lay behind him? of the wife who had died in that room and on that very bed? of the son to whom he had been so harsh and unforgiving, and who was not there now to cheer the dreary sick room? And did the unknown future loom up darkly before him and fill his soul with horror and dread of the world so near to him that he could almost see the boundary line which divides it from us?
Once, when Rossie said to him, “Shall I read you something from the Bible?” he answered her with the affirmative sign, and taking her own little Bible, which her mother once used, she opened it at the first chapter of Isaiah, and her eyes chancing to fall upon the 18th verse, she commenced reading in a clear, sweet voice, which seemed to linger over the words, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sinsbe as scarlet they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” There were spasms of pain distorting the pinched features on the pillow, as the judge listened to those blessed words of promise and hope for even the worst of sinners. Scarlet sins and crimson sins all to be forgiven, and what were his but these?
“I do believe he’s concerned in his mind,” Rossie thought, as she looked at him; and bending close to him she whispered, amid her own tears, “Shall I say the Lord’s Prayer now?”
She knew he meant yes, and kneeling by his bedside, with her face on his hands, she said the prayer he could not join in audibly, though she was sure he prayed in his heart; and she wished so much for some one older, and wiser, and better than herself, to see and talk to him.
“Shall I send for the minister or for Mrs. Baker?” she asked, feeling in that hour that there was something in the Nazarite woman, fanatical though she might be, which would answer to the sore need.
But the judge wished neither the clergyman nor Mrs. Baker, then; he would rather that pure young girl should read to and pray with him, and he made her understand it, and every day from that time on until the end came, she sat by him and read, and said the simple prayers of her childhood, and his as well,—prayers which took him back to his boyhood and his mother’s knee, and made him sob sometimes like a little child, as he tried so often to repeat the one word “forgive.” Gradually there came a more peaceful expression upon his face; his eyes lost that look of terror and dread, and the muscles about his mouth ceased to twitch so painfully, but of the change within,—if real change there had been,—he could not speak; that power was gone forever, and he lay, dead in limb as a stone, waiting for the end.
Once Rossie said to him, “Do you feel better, Judge Forrest, about dying. I mean, are you afraid now?”
He looked her steadily in the face and she was sure his quivering lips said no to her last question. That was the day he died, and the day when news was received from Everard. He had returned to Louisville from a journey to Alabama, had found the telegrams, and washastening home as fast as possible. Beatrice was better, and able to be again at the Forrest House, but it was Rossie who took to the dying man the message from his son. He was lying perfectly quiet, every limb and muscle composed, and a look of calm restfulness on his face, which lighted suddenly when Rossie said to him, “We have heard from Mr. Everard; he is on his way home; he will be here to-night. You are very glad,” she continued, as she saw the unmistakable joy in his face. “Maybe you will be able to make him understand what it was you wished to have done, but if you cannot and I ever find it out, depend upon it I will do it, sure. You can trust me.”
She looked like one to be trusted, the brave, unselfish little girl, on whom the dying eyes were fixed, so that Rossie’s was the last face they ever saw before they closed forever on the things of this world, and entered upon the realities of the next. Everard was not there, for the train was behind time, and when at last the Forrest House carriage came rapidly up the avenue, bringing the son who ten days ago had been cast out from his home and bidden never to enter it again, there were knots of crape upon the bell-knobs, and in the chamber above a sheeted figure lay, scarcely more quiet and still than when bound in the relentless bands of paralysis, but with death upon the white face, which in its last sleep looked so calm and peaceful.