“It does not seem possible,” said the rector, slowly; “and yet somehow I cannot help thinking sometimes that I must be going to die.”

“Herbert!”

“It is very curious—very curious—my reason tells me so, not feeling. I myself am just what I always was; but I think the symptoms are against me, and I see it in Marsden’s looks. Doesn’t he say so to you?”

“Dear,” said Mrs. Damerel, with a trembling voice, “he does not conceal from me that it is very serious; but oh, Herbert, how often have we seen even the children at death’s door, and yet brought back!”

“At death’s door,” he said reflectively; “yes, that’s a good expression—at the door of something unknown. Somehow it does not seem possible. One can believe it for others, not for one’s self. The idea is very strange.”

Mrs. Damerel was a good, religious woman; and her husband was a clergyman. She did not feel that this was how he ought to speak at such a moment, and the thought wrung her heart. “Dearest,” she said, growing more tender in her grief and pity, “it is a thing we must all think of one time or another; and to you, who have served God faithfully, it must be something else than ‘strange.’”

“What else?” he said, looking up at her. “I might say confusing, bewildering. To think that I am going I know not where, with no certainty of feeling that I shall ever know anything about it; that I am no longer a free agent, but helpless, like a leaf blown into a corner by the wind—I who for very nearly fifty years have had a voice in all that was done to me. My dear, I don’t know that I ever realized before how strange it was.”

“But—you are—happy, Herbert?” she said, in a low, imploring voice.

“Happy, am I? I don’t know—why should I be happy? I know what I am leaving, but I don’t know what I am going to. I don’t know anything about it. Something is going to happen to me, of which I have not the least conception what it is. I am not afraid, my dear, if that is what you mean,” he said, after a momentary pause.

This conversation took place weeks after the departure of Edward Wodehouse and the end of that first flowery chapter of Rose’s life. Her parents had not thought very much of her feelings, being concerned with much weightier matters. It had been a very long, lingering illness, not so violent as some fevers, but less hopeful; the crisis was over, but the patient did not mend. He was dying, and his wife knew it; and, though no one as yet had made the solemn announcement to him, he had found it out. He was very weak; but his mind was not at all impaired, and he could talk, with only a pause now and then for breath, as calmly as ever. It was a curious spectacle. He was gathering his cloak round him like CÆsar, but with sensations less satisfied and consciously heroic. Mr. Damerel was not a man to be indifferent to the necessity of dying fitly, with dignity and grace, but he had confidence in himself that nothing would disturb the folds of his robes at that supreme moment; he knew that no spiritual dread or cowardice would impair his fortitude; it was not necessary for him to make any effort to meet with dignity the unknown which was approaching; and his mind was at leisure to survey the strange, unexpected situation in which he found himself—going to die, without knowing what dying was, or how it would affect him, or where it would place him. I do not know, though he was a clergyman, that there was anything religious in the organization of his mind, and he had never come under any of those vivid influences which make men religious—or, at least, which make them fervent religionists—whatever may be the constitution of their mind. Mr. Damerel was no sceptic. He believed what he had been taught, and what he had taught in turn to others. His mind was not doctrinal or dogmatic, any more than it was devout; but he believed in the broad truths of Christianity, in some sort of a heaven, and some sort of a hell. These beliefs, however, had no effect upon his present state of feeling. He was not afraid of the hereafter; but his mind was bewildered and confounded by the contemplation of something close at hand which he did not know, and could not know so long as he retained consciousness of this only world with which he was acquainted. He was absorbed by the contemplation of this mystery. He was not thinking of his sins, nor of reward, nor of punishment, nor of rest from his labors (which had not been many). In short, he did not consider the great change that was about to take place upon him from a religious point of view at all, but rather from one which was at once natural and philosophical. I should not like to blame him for this, as, perhaps, some people will do. When we have lost much that made life sweet; when our friends, our children, have gone before us into the unseen country; then, indeed, the heart learns many longings for that world in which alone there can be reunion and explanation of life’s sore and weary mysteries. But this was not Mr. Damerel’s case. There was no one waiting for him at the golden gates; except perhaps, those whom he had long forgotten, and who had gone out of his life. He was departing alone, the first of his generation; curious and solitary, not knowing where he was going. To God’s presence; ah yes! but what did that mean?

“All the same, my dear,” he said, cheerfully, rousing himself, “we must not make ourselves wretched about it. A thing that happens to every man cannot be so very bad; and, in the mean time, we must make the best of it. I ought to have thought of it, perhaps, more than I have done.”

“Oh, Herbert! God is very merciful,” said his wife, who was crying softly by his side.

“Yes, yes, that is quite true; but that is not what I was thinking of. I ought to have thought of what would follow in case of this happening which is about to happen. I ought to have tried to save; but how could I have saved out of the little pittance we had?”

“Dear, don’t think of such things now.”

“But I must think upon them. I have never had any extravagant tastes, and we have always lived very quietly; but I fear you will find a difference. What a blessed thing that you are the sort of woman you are! The struggle will not fall so heavily upon you as upon most people. Incledon, of course, will marry Rose”—

“Oh, Herbert! what does all this matter? Do not think of it. I would so much rather hear you speak of yourself.”

“There is nothing to say about myself; and, perhaps, the less one thinks, in the circumstances, the better; it is a curious position to be in—that is all that one can say. Yes, Incledon will marry Rose; he will make her a very good husband. Do not let it be put off from any regard to me. He will be a great help to you; and you may trust him, I should think, to settle about the boys. Lay as much upon him as you can; he is quite able to bear it. If one had foreseen this, you know, there are many things that one might have done; but—curious!” said the rector, with a smile, “I can’t believe in it, even now.”

“Oh, Herbert, it is never too late for God! Perhaps your feeling is the right one. If He would but give you back to us now!”

“No, no; don’t think there is anything prophetic in my feelings, my dear. You may be sure every man is like me, more or less,” said Mr. Damerel. “I know we must all die; only it is impossible in respect to one’s self; I am myself, you perceive, just as much as ever; and yet to-morrow, perhaps, or next day—there’s the wonder. It makes one feel giddy now and then. About the boys: I have always felt that one time or other we should have to decide something for the boys. Leave it to Incledon; he is a practical man, and will know what to advise.”

“Dear Herbert, if you can talk of it—oh, how much better it would be to tell me what you wish, that I might be guided by your own feeling, than to refer me to any one else!” said Mrs. Damerel, crying, kissing his hand, and gazing with wet eyes into his calm face.

“Oh, talk; yes, I can talk, but for a little catching of the breath, the same as ever, I think; but the boys are a troublesome subject. Leave it to Incledon; he knows all about that sort of thing. I think now, perhaps, that I might sleep.”

And then the curtains were dropped, the watcher retired a little out of sight, and everything was subdued into absolute stillness. Mrs. Damerel sat down noiselessly in the background, and covered her face with her hands, and wept silent tears, few and bitter. She had felt him to be hard upon her many a day; she had seen what was wanting in him; but he was her husband, the first love of her youth, and her heart was rent asunder by this separation. She had enough to think of besides, had she been able; she had poverty to face, and to bring up her children as best she could in a world which henceforward would not be kind and soft to them as it had been hitherto. Her soul was heavy with a consciousness of all that was before her; but, in the mean time, she had room for no distinct feeling except one—that her husband, her love, was going to be taken from her. This tremendous parting, rending asunder of two lives that had been one, was more than enough to fill all her mind; she had room for nothing more.

And he slept, or thought he slept, floating out of the vague pain and wonder of his waking thoughts into strange, vague visions, dimmer still, and then back again to the fancies which were waking and not sleeping. There was a dim impression of painfulness in them, rather than pain itself; wonder, curiosity, and that strange sense of an absolute blank which makes the soul giddy and the brain swim. Sometimes his mind seemed to himself to wander, and he got astray somehow, and felt himself sinking in an unfathomable sea, or striving to make his way through some blackness of night, some thorny wood in which there was no path. I suppose he was asleep then; but even he himself scarcely knew.

When he woke it was evening, and the lamp, carefully shaded, had been lit at the other end of the room. He liked the light; and, when he stirred and spoke, the watchers made haste to draw back the curtains. The serene evening sky, full of soft tints of reflection from the sunset, with breaks of daffodil light melting into ineffable soft greenness and blueness, shone in through the uncurtained window which he liked to have left so, that he might see the sky. Rose and her mother were close by the bright circle made by the lamp, one of them preparing some drink for him, the other opening a new bottle of medicine which had just been sent. Though it was all so familiar to him, the fact that he was to go away so soon seemed to throw a strangeness over everything, and gave a bewildering novelty even to the figures he knew so well.

“More of Marsden’s stuff,” he said, with a low laugh; and his own voice sounded far off to him, as he lay looking at that strange little picture—a distant view of the two women against the light, with the sky and the window behind; somebody’s wife and daughter—his own—his very Rose, and she who had been his companion since his youth. Strange that he should look at them so quietly, almost with an amused sense of novelty, without any tragic feeling or even pain to speak of, in the thought that he was going away shortly and would see them no more. He fell to thinking of a thousand things as he lay there watching them, yet not watching them. Not the things, perhaps, that a dying man ought to think of; little nothings, chance words that he had forgotten for years, lines of poetry, somehow connected with his present condition, though he did not remember the links of connection. “The casement slowly grows, a glittering square,” he said to himself, and made an effort to think whence the line came, and why it should have at this moment thrust itself into his mind. Then he fell altogether into a poetic mood, and one disconnected line followed another into his mind, giving him a vague sense of melancholy pleasure. He said one or two of them aloud, calling the attention of his nurses—but it was not to them he was speaking. Finally, his mind centred on one which first of all seemed to strike him for its melody alone:—

He said this aloud once or twice over. “‘To dumb forgetfulness a prey!’ that is not my feeling—not my feeling; the rest is very true. Gray does not get half justice nowadays. How it satisfies the ear, flowing round and soft! ‘To dumb forgetfulness!’ now I wonder what he meant by that?”

“You are better, papa,” said Rose, softly. Her mother stayed behind, not able to speak; but the girl, in her simplicity, thought the poetry “a good sign.”

“No, Rose. ‘Dumb forgetfulness,’—it is not that, child; that is not what one fears; to be sure there is a coldness and blackness that might chime in with the words. But the rest is true, ‘the warm precincts of the cheerful day;’ warm is a living word altogether; it is not warm out here.”

“I will put the quilt on the bed,” said wistful Rose, thinking he complained of cold.

“No,” he said, roused, with a gentle laugh; “the quilt will do nothing for me; I am not cold—not yet; I suppose I shall be presently. Is your mother there? My dear, help me with your experience. I dislike cold so much; does one feel it creeping up before one dies?”

“Oh, Herbert, dearest!” said his wife, heart-broken. What could she answer to such a question?

“Nay, I don’t want to make an unnecessary fuss,” he said; “it is only a curiosity I have. Cold creeping up—it is disagreeable to think of it. What! I have I more medicine to take? What does Marsden mean by sending me his detestable compounds still? It will only make your bill the larger, and me the less comfortable. I will not have it; take it away.”

“It is something different,” said Mrs. Damerel. “The doctor thought perhaps it might be worth trying.”

“Is it the elixir of life?” said the patient, smiling; “nothing short of that would be worth trying; even that would be too much trouble for the good. It would be folly to come back now, when one has got over all the worst of the way.”

“You do not feel worse, Herbert?”

“Oh, no; when I tell you the worst is over, my anxious Martha! I am curious—curious—nothing more. I wish I could but tell you, after, what sort of a thing it was. Sit down by me, and give me your hand. Rose, you will be good; you will do everything your mother says?”

“Oh, Herbert!” said his wife, “do not think of us—if it has come to this—think of yourself, think where you are going—to God, Herbert, dearest, to be happy beyond anything we can think.”

“Is it so?” he said, still smiling. “I don’t know where I am going, my dear, and that is the only thing that gives me a little trouble. I should like to know. I am not afraid of God, who has always been far better to me than I deserved; and I hope I know the way of life.” This he said with a momentary seriousness which was quite exceptional. Then he added, in the musing tone which to his anxious watchers seemed almost a gentle delirium, “But think, my dear! to be sent even into a new place, a strange town, in the dark, without any direction—without knowing where to go, right hand or left.” He gave a little, soft, broken laugh. “It is the strangest way of dealing with curious, inquisitive creatures like men. I never realized it before.”

Here some one appeared, beckoning behind the curtains, to say that Mr. Nolan was in the next room. The curate came daily, and was always admitted. Rose went softly out to meet him, and almost dropped into the kind man’s arms in her exhaustion and excitement. “He is talking so very strangely,” she said, the tears running down her pale cheeks. “Oh, Mr. Nolan, I think he is wandering in his mind! Should I send for the doctor? To hear him speak is enough to break one’s heart.”

The good curate put her in a chair and soothed her, smoothing her pretty hair, with unconscious tenderness, as if she had been a child.

“Don’t cry, dear,” he said; “or rather, do cry, poor child, it will do you good; and stay quiet till I come back.”

Rose did what she was told with the docility of helplessness. She lay back in the chair, and cried softly. In this new strait she was as a child, and all the child’s overwhelming sense of desolation, and half-superstitious awe of the terrible event which was coming, weighed down her heart. Pity, and terror, and grief mingled in her mind, till it seemed unable to contain so much emotion. She sat and listened to the low voices in the next room, and watched the side gleam of light which came from the half-open door. The very world seemed hushed while this drama came to its conclusion, and there was not a sound without or within but the soft movements in the sick-room, and the low voices. How many new experiences had come into her simple life in so short a time! Darkness overshadowed the earth already, so that her pleasant pathway in it seemed lost; and now here was Death, that visitor who is always so doubly appalling the first time he enters a peaceful house.

“Well, Nolan, you have come in time, for I am just setting out,” said the rector, in a voice stronger than it had been, his anxious wife thought. “Why, man, don’t look so grave; and you, my dear, don’t cry, to discourage me. Set me out on my journey a little more cheerily! I never thought much about dying people before; and mind what I say, Nolan, because it is your work. Of course, to those who have never thought about such matters before, religion is all-important; but there’s more in it than that. When a man’s dying he wants humoring. Such strange fancies come into one’s head. I am not at all troubled or serious to speak of; but it is a very odd thing, if you think of it, to set out on such a journey without the least notion where you are to go!”

And he laughed again. It was not harsh nor profane, but a soft laugh, as easy as a child’s. I do not know why it should have horrified the attendants so, or what there is wrong in a laugh so gentle from a death-bed; but the hearers both shivered with natural pain and almost terror. They tried to lead him to more serious thoughts, but in vain. His mind, which had been serious enough before, had got somehow dissipated, intoxicated by the approach of the unknown. He could think of nothing else. A certain levity even mingled in his excitement. He asked questions almost with eagerness—questions no one could answer—about the accessories of death. He was curious beyond description about all that he would have to go through. “What a pity that I shall never be able to tell you what it is, and how I liked it!” he said, reflectively; “at least until you know all about it, too; we can compare notes then.” He would not give up this kind of talk. After the prayers for the sick, which Mr. Nolan read, he resumed the same subject; and if it is possible to imagine anything that could have made this terrible moment of her life more bitter to poor Mrs. Damerel, I think this would have been the one thing.

“Are his affairs in order, do you know?” said the doctor, after paying his late visit, as the curate accompanied him to the door. He had just given it as his opinion that his patient could not see another morning; and Mr. Nolan had made up his mind to remain at the rectory all night.

“I shouldn’t think it; he has never taken much trouble with his affairs.”

“Then don’t you think you could speak to him even now? I never saw a man so clear-headed, and in such possession of his faculties, so near—Speak to him, Nolan. He knows exactly how things are, and no agitation can harm him now. He must have some wishes about his family—some arrangements to make.”

Mr. Nolan restrained with difficulty an exclamation that rose to his lips, and which might have sounded unkind to a dying man; and then he asked abruptly, “Do you find, in your experience, that people who are dying are much concerned about those they leave behind?”

“Well, no,” said the doctor, doubtfully; “I don’t think they are. Self gets the upper hand. It is all Nature can do at that moment to think how she is to get through”—

“I suppose so,” said the curate, with that seriousness which naturally accompanies such a speculation. He walked with the doctor to the gate, and came back across the plot of shrubbery, musing, with a heavy heart, on the living and on the dying. It was a lovely starlight night, soft and shadowy, but with a brisk little questioning air which kept the leaves a-rustle. Mr. Nolan shivered with something like cold, as he looked up at the stars. “I wonder, after all, where he is going?” he said to himself, with a sympathetic ache of human curiosity in his heart.