“_She_ has no mother,” said Meredith, with a little wave of his hand towards his sister. “Poor Alice! But I have no doubt God has gracious purposes towards her,” he continued, recovering himself. “_This_ is in the family, and I don’t doubt she will follow me soon.”
It was thus he disposed of the matter which for the strangers to whose care he was about to leave her, was a matter of so much anxious thought.
After this Meredith’s malady made gradual but rapid progress. When Colin and his friend returned from Rome in the evenings, after their expeditions there, they thought they could see a difference in his looks even from the morning. He ceased to move about; he ceased to go out; finally he ceased to get up from his bed. All these changes were accomplished very gradually, with a heart-breaking regularity of succession. Alice, who was constantly engaged about him, doing every kind of office for him, was fortunately too much occupied to take full cognizance of that remorseless progress of decay; but the two friends, who watched it with eyes less urgent than those of love, yet almost more painfully pitiful, could trace all the little advances of the malady. Then there came the time, the last stage of all, when it was necessary to sit up with him all night--an office which Colin and Lauderdale shared between them, to let the poor little sister have a little reluctant rest.
The season had warmed into May, of all seasons the sweetest in Italy. To see the sun shine, it seemed impossible to think that he would not shine for ever; and, when the window of the sick room was opened in the early morning, such a breath of life and happiness came in--such a sweet gust of air, wild from the great breadth of the Campagna, breathing of dews and blossoms--as felt to Colin’s lips like an elixir of life. But that breathing balm imparted no refreshment to the dying man. He was not suffering much; he was only weary to the bottom of his soul--languid and yet restless, eager to be moved, yet unable to bear any motion. While Alice withdrew behind them by times to shed the tears that kept always gathering, and say a prayer in her heart for her dying brother--a prayer in which, with a child’s simplicity, she still left room for his restoration, and called it possible--the two others watched with the profoundest interest that which was not only the dying of a friend, but the waning of a life. To see him so individual and characteristic, with all the notable features and even faults of his mind as distinct and apparent as if he had been in the strongest health, and yet so near the end, was the strangest spectacle. What was it the end of? He directed them all from his deathbed, and, indeed, controlled them all, with a will stronger than ever before, securing his own way in face of all their remonstrances, and, indeed, seemed to grow more and more strong, absolute, and important, as he approached the final stage of weakness--which is a sight always wonderful to see. He kept on writing his book, propped up upon pillows, as long as he had strength enough to hold the pen; but, when that power too failed him, the unyielding soul coerced itself into accepting the pen of another, and dictated the last chapter, at which Alice laboured during the day, and which occasionally, to beguile the tedium of the long night-watches, his other attendants were permitted to carry on.