CHAPTER XXI.

ANTONIO GOES AWAY TO FULFIL HIS DESTINY.

HALF of the month of November was gone, and it wanted but three weeks to the day which had been fixed for Ida’s wedding. The weather had been damp and mild, when with cruel haste Winter asserted itself, and bitter north-easterly winds made life a misery to all but the most robust, and even their powers of endurance were severely taxed. The sudden inclemency of the weather produced a marked change for the worse in the old sculptor, though Ida and Marie took care to keep his room as warm as possible and to shield him from draught or chill.

On the third day of that spell of cold, Antonio did not attempt to leave his bed. His pulse was low, his breathing laboured, and it was with difficulty that he could be persuaded to take nourishment. The medical man looked grave, as he noted the condition of his patient, but he said little save to direct that a strong stimulant should at short intervals be given to the old man. Ida felt sadly anxious as she sat and watched her father. He dozed and hardly spoke during the greater part of the day, but towards evening, he rallied, and seemed so bright that Ida’s heart took fresh courage.

He expressed a wish to see Wilfred, and talked to him for some time, inquiring earnestly about his work.

“Good-bye, lad,” he said, when Wilfred, at a hint from Ida, who feared that her father was wearying himself, was about to withdraw. “Good-bye; aim ever at the highest both in life and work.”

Wilfred was touched as he saw the tender, yearning expression on the face of his old master and felt his withered hand grasp his with all the strength it could command. It was as if he were uttering a farewell, but that was a foolish fancy, Wilfred said to himself; the end could not be yet.

Later on, when the lamp was lit and the fire burning brightly, Antonio asked Ida to read to him. Without question, she took up the New Testament, the book she had most often read to him of late.

“What shall I read, father?” she asked as she turned over the pages.

“Read of the sufferings of Jesus Christ,” he said. “Do you remember, Ida, the words which Michael Angelo said to his household as they gathered about his death-bed? 'In your passage through this life remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ.’ I have thought little of the Christ during my lifetime, but now that it draws to its end, I would fain fix my thoughts on Him, and understand Him if I could.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Ida could not at once command her voice. But presently, in tones that were clear and sweet, though somewhat tremulous, she began to read the 27th chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel.

As she ended, her father’s voice echoed the words:

“'Truly this was the Son of God!’”

“Oh, father,” cried Ida, joy and sorrow contending within her as she spoke, “you see His beauty, you know Him now!”

“Ay, I see now what I could not see before,” said Antonio, brokenly. “Child, I was blind long ere I lost my bodily vision, blind with that worst possible blindness, a darkened spirit. I closed my eyes to the Divine Light of Day, and worked only in the moonlight of Nature. 'Art, for Art’s sake,’ I said to myself, and failed to see how the low aim narrowed and debased my work. Tregoning was right. True art cannot be bounded by the finite; it should lead the spirit onward and upward to God, the Supreme Good. Ida, I have wasted my talents; I have been but a maker of idols.”

“No, no, father, you must not say so!” she cried. “Your work has been true and noble, if not the highest possible, and no good work can be lost. Think how your Good Shepherd will appeal to the hearts of all who look on it; think of the great truth embodied in your Psyche!”

“Maybe my work is better than myself,” he said mournfully. “It may have results of which I did not dream when I wrought with chisel or moulding tools. We ourselves are tools in the hands of the Divine Worker. Ida, I can but hope that it was for such as me that Jesus prayed when He said, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”

“Surely it was for all who sin ignorantly,” she replied.

“And yet I might have known—I ought to have seen,” he said. “Ida, I can only cry as the poor dying thief did: 'Lord, remember me.’ I can say to Him: 'Thou who knowest all, take my case into Thy loving consideration, and deal with me in Thy mercy.’”

“And He will, He will!” Ida murmured, with tears. She could not say any more. It was all she could do to control herself.

Antonio lay still for awhile, apparently exhausted by the emotion which had been excited within him. Presently he said faintly:

“Kiss me, Ida, my child; I think I shall sleep.”

Ida kissed him many times. Then she gave him some milk and brandy, as the doctor had ordered, but he could only take a few spoonfuls.

In a little while, he appeared to be sleeping soundly. This sleep was unlike the brief, broken slumbers he had taken during the day. He did not rouse from it as the hours went by, even when they tried to give him nourishment.

“It must be well for him to sleep so soundly,” said Ida at night, as she and Marie stood by the bed looking down on the sleeper.

Marie did not reply. She knew not what to think of this deep sleep.

“Now Marie, you must go to bed,” said Ida. “I shall not leave him to-night; I shall rest perfectly well in this chair beside him.”

“No, no, Miss Ida; you had better go to bed, and let me sit up with the master.”

But Ida would not relinquish her right to watch beside her father, nor would she permit Marie to share her watch. Her father would surely wake the better and stronger for this refreshing sleep. Sorely against her will, Marie retired, and Ida, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, seated herself in the deep armchair which stood beside her father’s bed.

How slow, how solemn seemed the moments as they passed! All was still save for the faint crackle of the fire and the low sound of her father’s breathing. Ida thought it impossible that she should sleep. Her mind was in a state of painful tension, possessed by a vague dread which she could not shake off. She could not define her fear.

“Surely,” she said to herself more than once during her lonely watch, “it is well that he should sleep thus.”

Her mind was very active during the still, slow hours. Memory wandered through the past, recalling her happy childhood and all the things that had been during her peaceful life of closest companionship with her father. How cloudless, how precious, seemed the bygone days! And they were for ever gone. Her future could not “copy fair her past.” The joys that had been could not bloom again.

Ida must have passed into a doze as she mused upon the past, when suddenly she was roused to fullest consciousness by her father’s voice crying in clear, ringing tones, “Ida! Ida!”

She started up in a moment. Her father had raised himself in bed. There was a glad, bright look upon his face, his eyes were wide open, and to her amazement it seemed to her that he “saw.”

“I am here, father!” she cried, taking his chill hand in hers and pressing it tenderly.

But he heeded her not, and she saw with wonder mingled with fear that he was looking not at her but beyond her, as though he saw some gladdening vision that she could not behold. She felt that it was not to her that his words were addressed.

“Ida,” he cried again, in tones that thrilled his child as she listened. “My lost love given back to me! You were right, you were always right. As we draw near to the Christ, we see Him to be the True, the All-lovely One.”

There was a pause. His eyes were still straining forward, his face was lit up with indescribable rapture, when suddenly he exclaimed:

“Oh, it is all light, pure light! I see—I see—Christ in His beauty!”

The next moment he had fallen back upon his pillow, and the stillness that followed told Ida that he had passed from earth.

She did not cry out, nor summon help. She bent over him and closed his eyelids and straightened his form upon the pillow. A wonderful calmness had fallen on her. It was as if her own life had come to an end, and she should never feel sorrow more. So far from sorrowing, indeed, she was conscious of a strange joy.

“He sees now,” she said to herself. “He is no longer feeble and blind. He has gone into the light of God, 'out of darkness into his marvellous light.’”

But this exalted feeling could not last. As she gazed on her father’s face slowly taking the rigidity of death, a trembling seized Ida. She felt faint, helpless, forsaken. With one long, quivering sigh, she sank upon her knees beside the bed, still grasping the dead, cold hand. Then consciousness fled; and thus Marie found her when she came in the early morning to learn how the master was.