The Elect Lady, George MacDonald [smallest ebook reader TXT] 📗

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 assured, 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-grass" 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 assigning 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 God, 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 hell, 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!"

He said it with bated breath, and a great white awe upon his countenance. His eyes were shining; his breath came and went fast. Slowly his aged cheeks flushed with two bright spots. He looked as if the joy of his life was come.

"What if it should be the Holy Grail!" he repeated, and fell asleep with the words on his lips.

As the evening deepened into night, he woke. Crawford was sitting beside him. A change had come over him. He stared at George as if he could not make him out, closed his eyes, opened them, stared, and again closed them. He seemed to think he was there for no good.

"Would you like me to call Alexa?" said George.

"Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!" he replied.

George rose to go and call her.

"Beware of her!" said the laird, with glazy eyes, "Beware of Dawtie!"

"How?" asked George.

"Beware of her," he repeated. "If she can get the cup, she will! She would take it from me now, if she dared! She will steal it yet! Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!"

Alexa was in the drawing-room, on the other side of the hall. George went and told her that her father wanted Dawtie.

"I will find her," she said, and rose, but turned and asked:

"How does he seem now?"

"Rather worse," George answered.

"Are you going to be with him through the night?"

"I am; he insists on my staying with him," replied George, almost apologetically.

"Then," she returned, "you must have some supper. We will go down, and send up Dawtie."

He followed her to the kitchen. Dawtie was not there, but her mistress found her.

When she entered her master's room, he lay motionless, "and white with the whiteness of what is dead."

She got brandy, and made him swallow some. As soon as he recovered a little, he began to talk wildly.

"Oh, Agnes!" he cried, "do not leave me. I'm not a bad man! I'm not what Dawtie calls me. I believe in the atonement; I put no trust in myself; my righteousness is as filthy rags. Take me with you. I will go with you. There! Slip that under your white robe-washed in the blood of the Lamb. That will hide it-with the rest of my sins! The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife. Take it; take it; I should be lost in heaven without it! I can't see what I've got on, but it must be the robe of His righteousness, for I have none of my own! What should I be without it! It's all I've got! I couldn't bring away a single thing besides-and it's so cold to have but one thing on-I mean one thing in your hands! Do you say they will make me sell it? That would be worse than coming without it!"

He was talking to his wife!-persuading her to smuggle the cup into heaven! Dawtie went on her knees behind the curtain, and began to pray for him all she could. But something seemed stopping her, and making her prayer come only from her lips.

"Ah," said the voice of her master, "I thought so! How could I go up, and you praying against me like that! Cup or no cup, the thing was impossible!"

Dawtie opened her eyes-and there he was, holding back the curtain and looking round the edge of it with a face of eagerness, effort, and hate, as of one struggling to go, and unable to break away.

She rose to her feet.

"You are a fiend!" he cried. "I will go with Agnes!" He gave a cry, and ceased, and all was still. They heard the cry in the kitchen, and came running up.

They found Dawtie bending over her master, with a scared face. He seemed to have struck her, for one cheek was marked with red streaks across its whiteness.

"The Grail! the Holy Grail!" he cried. "I found it! I was bringing it home! She took it from me! She wants it to-"

His jaw fell, and he was dead. Alexa threw herself beside the body. George would have raised her, but she resisted, and lay motionless. He stood then behind her, watching an opportunity to get the cup from under the bed-clothes, that he might put it in the closet.

He ordered Dawtie to fetch water for her mistress; but Alexa told her she did not want any. Once and again George tried to raise her, and get his hand under the bed-clothes to feel for the cup.

"He is not dead!" cried Alexa; "he moved!"

"Get some brandy," said George.

She rose, and went to the table for the brandy. George, with the pretense of feeling the dead man's heart, threw back the clothes. He could find no cup. It had got further down! He would wait!

Alexa lifted her father's head on her arm, but it was plain that brandy could not help. She went and sat on a chair away from the bed, hopeless and exhausted.

George lifted the clothes from the foot of the bed, then from the further side, and then from the nearer, without attracting her attention. The cup was nowhere to be seen! He put his hand under the body, but the cup was not there! He had to leave the room that Dawtie and Meg might prepare it for burial. Alexa went to her chamber.

A moment after, George returned, called Meg to the door, and said:

"There must be a brass cup in the bed somewhere! I brought it to amuse him. He was fond of odd things, you know! If you should find it-"

"I will take care of it," answered Meg, and turned from him curtly.

George felt he had not a friend in the house, and that he must leave things as they were! The door of the closet was locked, and he could not go again to the death-chamber to take the laird's keys from the head of the bed! He knew that the two women would not let him. It had been an oversight not to secure them! He was glad the watch was safe: