Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/92

9, 1864.] “Give my love to my wife, Jane, and tell her I wish I could have seen her; but the doctors wouldn't let it be so. And, Jane, you'll love my little son?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered, with a sobbing sigh.

“And you'll come here sometimes when I'm gone? You'll come to see Lucy.”

“Oh, father!” uttered Jane, in a tone of startled pain, “you surely have not left her away from me?”

The earl half opened his eyes.

“What?”

“You have not left the guardianship of Lucy to any one but me?” breathlessly continued Jane. “Father, I have brought her up from her cradle; I have been to her a second mother; you could not leave her away from me?”

He was evidently troubled, insensible as he had nearly become to earthly things.

“I did not think of it, Jane; when I made my will, I did not think—” his voice sunk and Jane could not catch it. Silence fell upon the room, broken only by a convulsive sort of sound that arose now and then: the sobs of Jane.

“It's getting dark,” he resumed, later; “come closer to me, Jane. Don't you see the ship? She's lying at anchor while she waits. Look at her, Jane; how bright she is; never mind it's being dark here. The banks are green, and the flowers brilliant, and the clouds are of rose colour. And there, there's the Captain! there he is! Oh, Jane, shut your eyes, you cannot look upon his brightness. He is beckoning to me; he is beckoning to me!” reiterated the earl, his earnest voice so full of strange, loving triumph, that to Jane's mind it was impossible to connect what he said with a mere worldly vision. “I told you he would not reject a poor weather-beaten sailor. He is going to guide the ship to God—right into the blessed port of Heaven. Yes, yes, I am coming; never mind the darkness; we shall soon be in the light.”

He said no more, but lay quietly. The tide turned at eleven o'clock to go out, and the spirit of Francis, thirteenth Earl of Oakburn, went out with it.

One of the servants left the room to make known the event to the household below, and in the same moment Lady Laura Carlton, so anxiously looked for, arrived. It turned out that when the telegraphic despatch reached Colonel Marden's, she and the family had just departed on a day's excursion to some distant ruins. It was given to her when she returned home, but that was not until five in the evening; she had lost no time in coming then.

Laura was of an impetuous nature, and the instant the door was opened to her she ran up the stairs, trusting to instinct to find her father's bed-room. In the corridor of the first floor, close to the countess's chamber, she encountered the servant who had just left the room above. “How is the earl?” she then inquired.

The servant stared at her. Perhaps the woman did not know that another daughter was expected. She made no answer for the moment, and Laura stamped her foot impatiently.

“I ask you how Lord Oakburn is! Don't you know me? I am Lady Laura Carlton.”

“The earl is dead, my lady,” replied the woman in a low voice. “The breath has just left his body.”

“Dead!” shrieked Laura, in a tone that might be heard in every part of the house. “My father dead! Oh, Jane, is it true?” she wailed out, catching sight of Jane Chesney on the stairs above. “Jane, Jane! is papa dead?”

Out came the nurse from Lady Oakburn's room, her face as white as a sheet and sour as a crab, praying for caution and silence. Laura went higher up, and Jane took her into the death-chamber.

She flung herself down by the side of the bed, crying frantically, almost raving. Why had she not been sent for earlier? why had they allowed him to die without her seeing him? Jane, in her quiet, but far deeper grief, strove to soothe her; she whispered of his peaceful frame of mind, of his loving message of forgiveness; but Laura sobbed on hysterically, and would not be comforted.

A sight startled them both. A tall figure robed in a flannel dressing-gown, with an ashy pale face, came gliding in and stood gazing at the corpse. Laura had never seen her before, and the sight hushed her to silence; Jane knew her for Lady Oakburn. The nurse followed behind, wringing her hands, and audibly lamenting what it appeared she had no power to prevent. Laura's cry in the corridor had penetrated to the chamber, and Lady Oakburn rose out of her bed to come.

Anguish and reproach struggled in her countenance; anguish at her husband's death, reproach at those who had kept his state from her; but she had powerful command over her feelings, and retained almost unnatural calmness. Seeing Jane, she turned and confronted her.

“Was this well done, Lady Jane?”

“I do not know precisely to what you allude,” was Jane's answer. “I am a stranger in the house, holding no authority in it,