_ CHAPTER LVIII. A LITTLE LIFE WELL ROUNDED
"Pirate or not, the old gentleman was a good judge of diamonds!" said Mr. Burns, laying down one of the largest. "Not an inferior one in all I have gone over! Your uncle was a knowing man, sir: diamonds are worth much more now than when he brought them home. These rough ones will, I trust, turn out well: we cannot be so sure of them."
"How much suffering the earlier possession of them would have prevented!" said the laird. "And now they are ten times more welcome that we have the good of that first."
"Sapphires and all of the finest quality!" continued Mr. Burns, in no mood for reflection. "I'll tell you what you must do, Mr. Cosmo: you must get a few sheets of tissue paper, and wrap every stone up separately--a long job, but the better worth doing! There must be a thousand of them!"
"How can they hurt, being the hardest things in the world?" said Cosmo.
"Put them in any other company you please--wheel them to the equator in a barrowful of gravel, or line their box with sand-paper, and you may leave them naked as they were born! But, bless thy five wits! did you never hear the proverb,'Diamond cut diamond'? They're all of a sort, you see! I'd as soon shut up a thousand game-cocks in the same cellar. If they don't scratch each other, they may, or they might, or they could, or they would, or at any rate they should scratch each other. It was all very well so long as they lay in the wall of this your old diamond-mine. But now you'll be for ever playing with them! No, no! wrap each one up by itself, I say."
"We're so far from likely to keep fingering them, Mr. Burns," said Cosmo, "that our chief reason for wishing you to see them was that you might, if you would oblige us, take them away, and dispose of them for us!"
"A-ah!" rejoined Mr. Burns, "I fear I am getting too old for a transaction of such extent! I should have to go to London--to Paris--to Amsterdam--who knows where?--that is, to make the best of them--perhaps to America! And here was I thinking of retiring!"
"Then let this be your last business-transaction. It will not be a bad one to finish up with. You can make it a good thing for yourself as well as for us."
"If I undertake it, it shall be at a fixed percentage."
"Ten?" suggested Cosmo.
"No; there is no risk, only labour in this. When I took ten for that other diamond, I paid you the money for it, you will remember: that makes a difference. I wish you would come with me; I could help you to see a little of the world."
"I should like it greatly, but I could not leave my father."
Mr. Burns was a little nervous about the safety of the portmanteau that held such a number of tiny parcels in silver paper, and would not go inside the coach although it rained, but took a place in sight of his luggage. I will not say what the diamonds brought. I would not have my book bristle with pounds like a French novel with francs. They more than answered even Mr. Burns's expectations.
When he was gone, and all hope for this world vanished in the fruition of assured solvency, the laird began to fail. While Cosmo was yet on the way with Mr. Burns and the portmanteau to meet the coach, he said to his faithful old friend,
"I'm tired, Grizzie; I'll gang to my bed, I think. Gien ye'll gie me a han', I winna bide for Cosmo."
"Eh, sir, what for sud ye be in sic a hurry to sleep awa' the bonny daylicht?" remonstrated Grizzie, shot through with sudden fear, nor daring allow to herself she was afraid. "Bide till the yoong laird comes back wi' the news: he winna be lang."
"Gien ye haena time, Grizzie, I can manage for mysel'. Gang yer wa's, lass. Ye hae been a richt guid freen' to yer auld mistress! Ye hae dune yer best for him 'at she left!"
"Eh, sir! dinna speyk like that. It's terrible to hearken til!--I' the verra face o' the providence 'at's been takin' sic pains to mak up to ye for a' ye hae gang throu'--noo whan a 's weel, an' like to be weel, to turn roon' like this, an' speyk o' gaein' to yer bed! It's no worthy o' ye, laird!"
He was so amused with her expostulation that he laughed heartily, brightened up, and did not go to bed before Cosmo came--kept up, indeed, a good part of the day, and retired with the sun shining in at his western window.
The next day, however, he did not rise. But he had no suffering to speak of, and his face was serene as the gathering of the sunrays to go down together; a perfect yet deepening peace was upon it. Cosmo scarcely left him, but watched and waited, with a cold spot at his heart, which kept growing bigger and bigger, as he saw his father slowly drifting out on the ebb-tide of this earthly life. Cosmo had now to go through that most painful experience of all--when the loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther and farther from the cares of those they leave--a gulf ever widening between, already impassable as lapsing ages can make it. But when final departure had left the mind free to work for the heart, Cosmo said to himself--"What if the dying who seem thus divided from us, are but looking over the tops of insignificant earthly things? What if the heart within them is lying content in a closer contact with ours than our dull fears and too level outlook will allow us to share? One thing their apparent withdrawal means--that we must go over to them; they cannot retrace, for that would be to retrograde. They have already begun to learn the language and ways of the old world, begun to be children there afresh, while we remain still the slaves of new, low--bred habits of unbelief and self-preservation, which already to them look as unwise as unlovely. But our turn will come, and we shall go after, and be taught of them. In the meantime let us so live that it may be the easier for us in dying to let the loved ones know that we are loving them all the time."
The laird ceased to eat, and spoke seldom, but would often smile--only there was in his smile too that far-off something which troubled his son. One word he often murmured--PEACE. Two or three times there came as it were a check in the drift seaward, and he spoke plainly. This is very near what he said on one of these occasions:
"Peace! peace! Cosmo, my son, ye dinna ken hoo strong it can be! Naebody can ken what it's like till it comes. I hae been troubled a' my life, an' noo the verra peace is 'maist ower muckle for me! It's like as gien the sun wad put oot the fire. I jist seem whiles to be lyin' here waitin' for ye to come intil my peace, an' be ane wi' me! But ye hae a lang this warl's life afore ye yet. Eh! winna it be gran' whan it's weel ower, an' ye come! You an' me an' yer mother an' God an' a'! But somehoo I dinna seem to be lea'in' ye aither--no half sae muckle as whan ye gaed awa' to the college, an' that although ye're ten times mair to me noo than ye war than. Deith canna weel be muckle like onything we think aboot it; but there maun surely be a heap o' fowk unco dreary an' fusionless i' the warl' deith taks us til; an' the mair I think aboot it, the mair likly it seems we'll hae a heap to du wi' them--a sair wark tryin' to lat them ken what they are, an' whaur they cam frae, an' hoo they maun gang to win hame--for deith can no more be yer hame nor a sair fa' upo' the ro'd be yer bed. There may be mony ane there we ca'd auld here,'at we'll hae to tak like a bairn upo' oor knees an' bring up. I see na anither w'y o' 't. The Lord may ken a better, but I think he's shawn me this. For them 'at are Christ's maun hae wark like his to du, an' what for no the personal ministrations o' redemption to them 'at are deid, that they may come alive by kennin' him? Auld bairns as weel as yoong hae to be fed wi' the spune."
The day before that on which he went, he seemed to wake up suddenly, and said,--
"Cosmo, I'm no inclined to mak a promise wi'regaird to ony possible communication wi' ye frae the ither warl', nor do I the least expec' to appear or speyk to ye. But ye needna for that conclude me awa' frae ye a' thegither. Fowk may hae a hantle o' communication ohn aither o' them kent it at the time, I'm thinkin'. Min' this ony gait: God's oor hame, an' gien ye be at hame an' I be at hame, we canna be far sun'ert!"
As the sun was going down, closing a lovely day of promise, the boat of sleep, with a gentle wind of life and birth filling its sail, bore, softly gliding, the old pilgrim across the faint border between this and that. It may be that then, for a time, like a babe new-born, he needed careful hands and gentle nursing; and if so, there was his wife, who must surely by now have had time to grow strong. Cosmo wept and was lonely, but not broken-hearted; for he was a live man with a mighty hope and great duties, each of them ready to become a great joy. Such a man I do not think even diamonds could hurt, although, where breathes no wind of life, those very crystals of light are amongst the worst in Beelzebub's army to fly-blow a soul into a thing of hate and horror. _