Masterman and Son Part 37

"Who's got my offices now?"

"They're still to let, sir. P'raps you'd like to see them."

"Yes, I should."

They went up into the rooms. Masterman's name was still upon the gla.s.s door of the outer office. The desk that he had used was in its place beneath the window. But there was dust upon the furniture, dust upon the windows, and a kind of ghostly loneliness in the deserted rooms.

"I've a fancy for sitting at that desk again, Arthur."

He sat quite silent, his hat tilted back, his fingers drumming on the elbows of the chair.

"Let us go, father. It's too lonely."

"Yes--lonely," he said in a low voice. "The place that knew you knows you no more for ever. It's a queer sensation. No more--for ever!"

They left the room, went downstairs; and Arthur noticed with astonishment that Masterman gave the obsequious Perkins a sovereign.

"Oh! you needn't look like that," said Masterman. "I can afford it.

And if I couldn't afford it I should do it. Perkins still has his illusions concerning me, and it isn't worth while destroying them. He very likely thinks I'm going to rent the offices again. Well, let him think it."

They left the city and turned northward. The evening had fallen when they reached Highbourne Gardens. The church shone with lighted windows, and on the misty air there floated out the sound of hymn-music. Eagle House reared a dim bulk through the mist. A white-painted board, just beside the gate, informed the public that the house was to be sold.

"Come away," said Arthur. "I can't bear it!"

For at last he saw that in this aimless wandering there had been an aim; his father was revisiting old scenes to take farewell of them.

"Hush!" said Masterman. "Listen!"

As they listened, the hymn-music became recognisable.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day; Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pa.s.s away; Change and decay in all around I see...

The hymn ceased.

"Give me your arm, Arthur; I feel a little faint. That's right. Now let us go back."

The rain had begun to fall, and the wind was rising. It was nine o'clock when they reached Tottenham, and both were wet through.

The next day he went to his work as usual. The weather was miserable.

A raw north-east wind blew, bringing with it snow. The snow became sleet, and the wind changed to the south-east, bearing on its wings continuous rain. After the rain came black, impenetrable fog.

Tottenham was submerged beneath the clammy vapour.

On the Thursday, when Arthur returned from Bundy's, he found his father huddled over the fire, coughing violently.

"Are you ill, father?" he asked in alarm.

"Oh! just a cold. Nothing to be troubled over."

But the next morning he did not rise from his bed. Bronchitis had declared itself. A local doctor, hastily called in, hinted at some injury to the lungs, and spoke guardedly of a possible weakness of the heart. From that hour Arthur never left his father's bedside.

Mrs. Bundy no sooner heard the news than she flew to the rescue. The astonished street beheld a carriage with prancing horses at the door, from which emerged a lady in a long sealskin jacket, who entered the humble house, and did not return. She had established herself as Masterman's nurse, glad to exchange the idle trivialities of Kensington for these hard duties of helpful service. Bundy sent his own physician, a famous specialist, who took Arthur aside, and asked him gravely what his father's habits of life had been. When Arthur told him who his father was, and how he had lived since he came to Tottenham, he became yet more grave.

"I think I see," he said. "You won't mind my saying that a sudden change of life at your father's age was a great mistake."

"My father would have it so."

"I understand."

"Is there any danger?"

"There is always danger where there is serious illness. I ought to tell you, your father's condition is precarious. There is such a thing as a man's loosening his grasp on life--doing it purposely, I mean.

Against that condition the best medical skill is useless."

"Then you think he will die?"

"Yes; his troubles are nearly over."

Arthur returned to the sick-room with a sinking heart. It seemed an inconceivable thing that that strong frame, the vehicle of so many energies, should be in process of dissolution. It had fulfilled the intention of its Maker for so many years, borne heat and cold, the strain of struggle and fatigue, with such a perfect adaptation, with such indefatigable vigour, its every atom mutely obedient to the guiding will; and now it must be numbered with the spent forces of creation. It must return to the womb of Nature from which it sprang, and become part of the innumerable dust of perished generations. Such was the law of waste that ruled the world--an awful thought to a son beside a father's death-bed. And against the certain working of that law, what had man to place but frail and feeble hopes; what, at best, but the solemn a.s.severation of a faith daily contradicted by the incontrovertible realities of physical dissolution, by the stark facts of departure, disappearance? ... An awful thought, indeed, before which the stoutest hearts have trembled.

His father lay quite silent. He had not spoken for many hours. There was no sound but the soft hissing of the steam in the bronchitis kettle, and the dropping of a cinder on the hearth.

Towards dawn he spoke.

"Well... well! ... Seems as if it was all a mistake.... A-striving and a-struggling, and nothing come of it. Folk'll laugh.... Him as had the city at his feet, working for poor old Grimes. It's a poor end!--a poor end!"

"Father, don't you know me?"

"It isn't Helen, is it? No, she went away. Poor little girl!"

The mind pursued its own sad communings.

"Well, I guess G.o.d's got to put up wi' me. He's big enough to understand. He don't want apologies. I am what I am."

The grayness of the dawn filled the room.

Suddenly he raised himself slightly on his pillow. He grasped Arthur's hand. There came into the tired eyes a new light, a long, intense wonder-look.

"_Mary!_"

It was his wife's name.

Then the strong face grew slowly empty of expression, the eyes closed.

Archibold Masterman had laid himself down to rest among the generations of the dead, and all his love and hatred had perished with him, neither had he any more a portion in anything that is done under the sun.