In short, to quote the Savage again, Stephen Davenant was an admirable example, as artists would say, of "a study in black and white."
As he stood by the bed, motionless, silent, with the fixed regard of his light gray eyes on the sick man, he looked not unlike one of those sleek and emaciated birds which one sees standing on the bank of the Ganges, waiting for the floating by of stray dead bodies.
And yet he was not unhandsome. At times he looked remarkably well; when, for instance, he was delivering a lecture or an address at some institute or May meeting. His voice was low and soft, and not seldom insinuating, and some of his friends had called him, half in jest, half in earnest, "Fascination Davenant."
It will be gathered from this description that to call all the race of Davenants bad was unfair; every rule has its exception, and Stephen Davenant was the exception to this. He was "a good young man."
Fathers held him up as a pattern to their wayward sons, mothers patronized and lauded him, and their daughters regarded him as almost too good to live.
The minutes, so slow for the watchers, so rapid to the man for whom they were numbered, passed, and the old cracked clock in the half-ruined stables wheezed out the hour, when, as if the sound had roused him, old Ralph moved slightly, and opening his eyes, looked slowly from one upright figure to the other.
Dark eyes that had not even yet lost all their fire, and still shone out like a bird's from their wrinkled, cavernous hollows.
Stephen unlocked his wrist, bent down, and murmured, in his soft, silky voice:
A smile, an unpleasant smile to see on such a face, glimmered on the old man's lips.
"Here still, Stephen?" he said, slowly and hollowly. "You'd make a good--mute."
A faint, pink tinge crept over Stephen's pale face, but he smiled and shook his head meekly.
"Who's that?" asked Ralph, half turning his eyes to the physician.
"Sir Humphrey, uncle--the doctor," replied Stephen, and the great doctor came a little nearer and felt the faint pulse.
"What's he stopping for?" gasped the old man. "What can he do, and--why don't he go?"
"We must not leave you, uncle, till you are better."
A faint flame shot up in the old man's eyes.
"Better, that's a lie, you know. You always were----" Then a paroxysm of faintness took him, but he struggled with and overcame it.