The Elect Lady Part 24

George thought a little.

"What would you have me persuade him to?" he asked, for he might hear something it would be useful to know. But Dawtie had no right and no inclination to tell him what she knew.

"I only wish you would persuade him to do what he knows he ought to do,"

she replied.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WATCH.

George stayed with the laird a good while, and held a long, broken talk with him. When he went Alexa came. She thought her father seemed happier. George had put the cup away for him. Alexa sat with him that night. She knew nothing of such a precious thing being in the house--in the room with them.

In the middle of the night, as she was arranging his pillows, the laird drew from under the bed-clothes, and held up to her, flashing in the light of the one candle, the jeweled watch. She stared. The old man was pleased at her surprise and evident admiration. She held out her hand for it. He gave it her.

"That watch," he said, "is believed to have belonged to Ninon de l'Enclos. It _may_, but I doubt it myself. It is well known she never took presents from her admirers, and she was too poor to have bought such a thing. Mme. de Maintenon, however, or some one of her lady-friends, might have given it her. It will be yours one day--that is, if you marry the man I should like you to marry."

"Dear father, do not talk of marrying. I have enough with you," cried Alexa, and felt as if she hated George.

"Unfortunately, you can not have me always," returned her father. "I will say nothing more now, but I desire you to consider what I have said."

Alexa put the watch in his hand.

"I trust you do not suppose," she said, "that a house full of things like that would make any difference."

He looked up at her sharply. A house full--what did she know? It silenced him, and he lay thinking. Surely the delight of lovely things must be in every woman's heart. Was not the pa.s.sion, developed or undeveloped, universal? Could a child of his _not_ care for such things?

"Ah," he said to himself, "she takes after her mother."

A wall seemed to rise between him and his daughter. Alas! alas! the things he loved and must one day yield would not be cherished by her. No tender regard would hover around them when he was gone. She would be no protecting divinity to them. G.o.d in heaven! she might--she would--he was sure she would sell them.

It seems the sole possible comfort of avarice, as it pa.s.ses empty and hungry into the empty regions--that the things it can no more see with eyes or handle with hands will yet be together somewhere. Hence the rich leave to the rich, avoiding the man who most needs, or would best use their money. Is there a lurking notion in the man of much goods, I wonder, that, in the still watches of the night, when men sleep, he will return to look on what he leaves behind him? Does he forget the torture of seeing it at the command, in the enjoyment of another--his will concerning this thing or that but a mockery? Does he know that he who then holds them will not be able to conceive of their having been or ever being another's as now they are his?

As Alexa sat in the dim light by her brooding father she loathed the shining thing he had again drawn under the bed-clothes--shrunk from it as from a manacle the devil had tried to slip on her wrist. The judicial a.s.sumption of society suddenly appeared in the emptiness of its arrogance. Marriage for the sake of _things_. Was she not a live soul, made for better than that She was ashamed of the innocent pleasure the glittering toy had given her.

The laird cast now and then a glance at her face, and sighed. He gathered from it the conviction that she would be a cruel step-mother to his children, her mercy that of a loveless non-collector. It should not be. He would do better for them than that. He loved his daughter, but needed not therefore sacrifice his last hopes where the sacrifice would meet with no acceptance. House and land should be hers, but not his jewels; not the contents of his closet.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WILL.

George came again to see him the next day, and had again a long conference with him. The laird told him that he had fully resolved to leave everything to his daughter, personal as well as real, on the one condition that she should marry her cousin; if she would not, then the contents of his closet, with his library, and certain articles specified, should pa.s.s to Crawford.

"And you must take care," he said, "if my death should come suddenly, that anything valuable in this room be carried into the closet before it is sealed up."

Shrinking as he did from the idea of death, the old man was yet able, in the interest of his possessions, to talk of it! It was as if he thought the sole consolation that, in the loss of their owner, his things could have, was the continuance of their intercourse with each other in the heaven of his Mammon-besotted imagination.

George responded heartily, showing a grat.i.tude more genuine than fine: every virtue partakes of the ground in which it is grown. He a.s.sured the laird that, valuable as was in itself his contingent gift, which no man could appreciate more than he, it would be far more valuable to him if it sealed his adoption as his son-in-law. He would rather owe the possession of the wonderful collection to the daughter than to the father! In either case the precious property would be held as for him, each thing as carefully tended as by the laird's own eye and hand!

Whether it would at the moment have comforted the dying man to be a.s.sured, as George might have him, that there would be nothing left of him to grieve at the loss of his idols--nothing left of him but a memory, to last so long as George and Alexa and one or two more should remain unburied, I can not tell. It was in any case a dreary outlook for him. Hope and faith and almost love had been sucked from his life by "the hindering knot-gra.s.s" which had spread its white bloodless roots in all directions through soul and heart and mind, exhausting and choking in them everything of divinest origin. The weeds in George's heart were of another kind, and better nor worse in themselves; the misery was that neither of them was endeavoring to root them out. The thief who is trying to be better is ages ahead of the most honorable man who is making no such effort. The one is alive; the other is dead and on the way to corruption.

They treated themselves to a gaze together on the cup and the watch; then George went to give directions to the laird's lawyer for the drawing up of his new will.

The next day it was brought, read, signed by the laird, and his signature duly witnessed.

Dawtie being on the spot was made one of the witnesses. The laird trembled lest her fanaticism should break out in appeal to the lawyer concerning the cup; he could not understand that the cup was nothing to her; that she did not imagine herself a setter right of wrongs, but knew herself her neighbor's keeper, one that had to deliver his soul from death! Had the cup come into her possession, she would have sent it back to the owner, but it was not worth her care that the Earl of Borland should cast his eyes when he would upon a jewel in a cabinet!

Dawtie was very white as he signed his name. Where the others saw but a legal ceremony, she feared her loved master was a.s.signing his soul to the devil, as she had read of Dr. Faustus in the old ballad. He was gliding away into the dark, and no one to whom he had done a good turn with the Mammon of unrighteousness, was waiting to receive him into an everlasting habitation! She had and she needed no special cause to love her master, any more than to love the chickens and the calves; she loved because something that could be loved was there present to her; but he had always spoken kindly to her, and been pleased with her endeavor to serve him; and now he was going where she could do nothing for him!--except pray, as her heart and Andrew had taught her, knowing that "all live unto _Him!_" But alas! what were prayers where the man would not take the things prayed for! Nevertheless all things _were_ possible with G.o.d, and she _would_ pray for him!

It was also with white face, and it was with trembling hand that she signed her own name, for she felt as if giving him a push down the icy slope into the abyss.

But when the thing was done, the old man went quietly to sleep, and dreamed of a radiant jewel, glorious as he had never seen jewel, ever within yet ever eluding his grasp.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SANGREAL.

The next day he seemed better, and Alexa began to hope again. But in the afternoon his pulse began to sink, and when Crawford came he could welcome him only with a smile and a vain effort to put out his hand.

George bent down to him. The others, at a sign from his eyes, left the room.

"I can't find it, George!" he whispered.

"I put it away for you last night, you remember!" answered George.

"Oh, no, you didn't! I had it in my hand a minute ago! But I fell into a doze, and it is gone! George, get it!--get it for me, or I shall go mad!" George went and brought it him.

"Thank you! thank you! Now I remember! I thought I was in h.e.l.l, and they took it from me!"

"Don't you be afraid, sir! Fall asleep when you feel inclined. I will keep my eye on the cup."

"You will not go away?"

"No; I will stay as long as you like; there is nothing to take me away.

If I had thought you would be worse, I would not have gone last night."

"I'm not worse! What put that in your head? Don't you hear me speaking better? I've thought about it, George, and am convinced the cup is a talisman! I am better all the time I hold it! It was because I let you put it away that I was worse last night--for no other reason. If it were not a talisman, how else could it have so nestled itself into my heart!

I feel better, always, the moment I take it in my hand! There is something more than common about that chalice! George, what if it should be the Holy Grail!"