He lingered for some time after, continually endeavoring to resume his old work, and now and then becoming sufficiently articulate to give full evidence of the perfect possession of his faculties. But within a week a third seizure carried off the old man without power of protest or remedy. His unexpressed intentions died with him, but the words, “I’ve something to add,” were the last he said.
Little Jock Trevor had never been a favorite with his father; there had been between them nothing of the caressing intercourse which generally exists between a very old father and a young child. He was not the pet or plaything of the old man, who had remorselessly sentenced him to as complete a separation as was possible from his sister. But, nevertheless, Jock had grown up literally at his father’s feet, and the world became suddenly very vacant and strange to him when the familiar figure was withdrawn. The little fellow did not understand life without this central point of stability and power in it; he had been used to the old man’s presence, to the half-comprehended talks which went on over his head, and to the background of that mysterious aged life filled with so many things beyond Jock’s understanding, which yet afforded depth and fullness to his strange perceptions of the mysterious world. He and his books had lain in the foreground in a varying atmosphere of visions, but behind had always been that pervading consciousness of something more important, a dimly apprehended world of fact. So it happened that, of all the household at the Terrace, it was little Jock who felt his father’s death the most deeply; his nerves had suffered from contact with that still more mysterious dying which he could not understand. He could not get out of his childish mind the impression made upon him by the sudden opening, in the dreadful silence of his father’s eyes. He who had spent all his life alone could be left alone no longer; he followed Lucy about wherever she went, holding tightly by her hand. There was no one to interfere, or to prevent the hitherto neglected child from becoming the chief interest of the house. He felt the loss far more, though it was to his immediate advantage, than Lucy did, who cried a little when she woke every morning at the recollection, but put on her crape with a certain melancholy pleasure in the completeness and “depth” of her mourning. Mrs. Ford, though she cried too, could not but admire and wonder at these black dresses covered with crape, which she felt it would have been a pleasure to old Mr. Trevor to see, so “deep” were they, and showing so much respect. It was almost like widows’ mourning, she declared, deeper far than that which ordinary mourners wore for a parent; but then, when you considered what Lucy had lost--and gained!
