The last anxious doubt was uttered more audibly than the rest; it escaped from his lips with a groan. A woman who was dozing over the fire started up.
"Did you call, sir?"
"No. Go out and leave me."
"But–"
"Go out and leave me," he repeated, with anger little fitted to his position. And the woman was speeding from the room, when he caught at the curtain and recalled her.
"Are they not come?"
"Not yet, sir. But, with this heavy fall, it's not to be wondered at. The highways must be almost impassable. With good roads they might have been here hours ago."
She went out. He lay back on his pillow: his eyes wide open, but wearing the same dreamy look. You may be wondering who he is; though you probably guess, for you have heard of him once before as Mr. Cooper, the uncle who discarded Edgar Halliburton.
I must give you a few words of retrospect. Richard Cooper was the eldest of three children; the others were a brother and a sister: Richard, Alfred, and Helen. Alfred and Helen both married; Richard never did marry. It was somewhat singular that the brother and sister should both die, each leaving an orphan; and that the orphans should find a home in the house of their Uncle Richard. Julia Cooper, the brother's orphan, was the first to come to it, a long time before Edgar Halliburton came. Helen had married the Rev. William Halliburton, and she died at his rectory in Devonshire—sending that earnest prayer to her brother Richard which you have just heard him utter. A little while, and her husband, the rector, also died; and then it was that Edgar went up to his Uncle Richard's. Fortunate for these two orphan children, it appeared to be, that their uncle had not married and could give them a good home.
A good home he did give them. Julia left it first to become the wife of Anthony Dare, a solicitor in large practice in a distant city. She married him very soon after her cousin Edgar came to his uncle's. And it was after the marriage of Julia that Edgar was discarded and turned adrift. Years, many years, had gone by since then; and here lay Richard Cooper, stricken for death and repenting of the harshness, which he had not repented of or sought to atone for all through those long years. Ah, my friends! whatsoever may lie upon our consciences, however we may have contrived to ignore it during our busy lives, be assured that it will find us out on our death-bed!
Richard Cooper lay back on his pillow, his eyes wide open with their inward tribulation. "Who knows but there would be time yet?" he suddenly murmured. And the thought appeared to rouse his mind and flush his cheek, and he lifted his hand and grasped the bell-rope, ringing it so loudly as to bring two servants to the room.
"Go up, one of you, to Lawyer Weston's," he uttered. "Bring him back with you. Tell him I want to alter my will, and that there may yet be time. Don't send—one of you go," he repeated in tones of agonising entreaty. "Bring him; bring him back with you!"
As the echo of his voice died away there came a loud summons at the street door, as of a hasty arrival. "Sir," cried one of the maids, "they're come at last! I thought I heard a carriage drawing up in the snow."
"Who's come?" he asked in some confusion of mind. "Weston?"
"Not him, sir; Mr. and Mrs. Dare," replied the servant as she hurried out.
A lady and gentleman were getting out of a coach at the door. A tall, very tall man, with handsome features, but an unpleasantly free expression. The lady was tall also, stout and fair, with an imperious look in her little turned-up nose. "Are we in time?" the latter asked of the servants.
"It's nearly as much as can be said, ma'am," was the answer. "But he has roused up in the last hour, and is growing excited. The doctors thought it might be so: that he'd not continue in the lethargy to the last."
They went on at once to the sick chamber. Every sense of the dying man appeared to be on the alert. His hands were holding back the curtain, his eyes were strained on the door. "Why have you been so long?" he cried in a voice of strength they were surprised to hear.
"Dear uncle," said Mrs. Dare, bending over the bed and clasping the feeble hands, "we started the very moment the letter came. But we could not get along—the roads are dreadfully heavy."
"Sir," whispered a servant in the invalid's ear, "are we to go now for Lawyer Weston?"
"No, there's no need," was the prompt answer. "Anthony Dare, you are a lawyer," continued Mr. Cooper; "you'll do what I want done as well as another. Will you do it?"
"Anything you please, sir," was Mr. Dare's reply.
"Sit down, then; Julia, sit down. You may be hungry and thirsty after your journey; but you must wait. Life's not ebbing out of you, as it is out of me. We'll get this matter over, that my mind may be so far at rest; and then you can eat and drink of the best that my house affords. I am in mortal pain, Anthony Dare."
Mrs. Dare was silently removing some of her outer wrappings, and whispering with the servant at the extremity of the roomy chamber; but Mr. Dare, who had taken off his great-coat and hat in the hall, continued to stand by the sick bed.
"I am sorry to hear it, sir," he said, in reply to Mr. Cooper's concluding sentence. "Can the medical men afford you no relief?"
"It is pain of mind, Anthony Dare, not pain of body. That pain has passed from me. I would have sent for you and Julia before, but I did not think until yesterday that the end was so near. Never let a man be guilty of injustice!" broke forth Mr. Cooper, vehemently. "Or let him know that it will come home to him to trouble his dying bed."
"What can I do for you, sir?" questioned Mr. Dare.
"If you will open that bureau, you'll find pen, ink, and paper. Julia, come here: and see that we are alone."
The servant left the room, and Mrs. Dare came forward, divested of her cloaks. She wore a handsome dark-blue satin dress (much the fashion at that time) with a good deal of rich white lace about it, a heavy gold chain, and some very showy amethysts set in gold. The jewellery was real, however, not sham; but altogether her attire looked somewhat out of place for a death-chamber.
The afternoon was drawing to a close. What with that and the dense atmosphere outside, the chamber had grown dim. Mr. Dare disposed the writing materials on a small round table at the invalid's elbow, and then looked towards the distant window.
"I fear I cannot see, sir, without a light."
"Call for it, Julia," said the invalid.
A lamp was brought in and placed on the table, so that its rays should not affect those eyes so soon to close to all earthly light. And Mr. Dare waited, pen in hand.
"I have been hard and wilful," began Mr. Cooper, putting up his trembling hands. "I have been obdurate, and selfish, and unjust; and now it is keeping peace from me–"
"But in what way, dear uncle?" softly put in Mrs. Dare; and it may as well be remarked that whenever Mrs. Dare attempted to speak softly and kindly it seemed to bear an unnatural sound to others' ears.
"In what way?—why, with regard to Edgar Halliburton," said Mr. Cooper, the dew breaking out upon his brow. "In seeking to follow the calling marked out for him by his father, he only did his duty; and I should have seen it in that light but for my own obstinate pride and self-will. I did wrong to discard him: I have done wrong ever since in keeping him from me, in refusing to be reconciled. Are you listening, Anthony Dare?"
"Certainly, sir. I hear."
"Julia, I say that there was no reason for my turning him away. There has been no reason for my keeping him away. I have refused to be reconciled: I have sent back