“Oh, Mother Earth, upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o’er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace,
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken!”
—WHITTIER.
Meanwhile, the friends assembled downstairs, in Mrs. Helmstedt’s parlor, waited anxiously for her summons.
Presently, the bell rang, and Nellie Houston sprang up quickly to answer it. And soon after she left, Margaret appeared, but with a face so changed, so aghast, that all who beheld it were stricken with fear and wonder. It wore no expression of grief, or terror, or anxiety—it looked as if all these emotions were impossible to it, henceforth—it looked awed and appalled, as though some tremendous revelation of sin or suffering, or both, had fallen like a thunderbolt upon that young brow, and stricken childhood from it at once and forever.
Ralph Houston, who was waiting for her appearance, sprang up to meet her, and, alarmed at her expression of countenance, hastened toward her, exclaiming:
“Margaret, Margaret! what is it?”
But, with a gesture of almost awful solemnity, she waved him away, and, silent as a visitant from the grave, passed through and left the room.
Ralph gazed after her in consternation, and then turned upon his father a look of mute inquiry.
The colonel gravely shook his head, and remained silent.
Margaret did not return.
Some hours subsequent to this, near midnight, were assembled, in the chamber of death, old Colonel and Mrs. Compton, the Houstons, Dr. Hartley and Mr. Wellworth—all the family and friends, in fact, except Margaret. She had not made her appearance since. With that look of annihilated youth, she had passed through the parlor, and gone out. All wondered at her absence from the dying bed of her idolized mother; but none expressed an opinion upon the subject.
The chamber was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp that stood upon the hearth, and, reversing the natural course of light, threw the shadows, in strange, fantastic shapes, to the ceiling. It projected the shadow of Mr. Wellworth, who stood at Mrs. Helmstedt’s feet, up over the bed, until it looked like the form of some dark spirit, swooping down to snatch the soul of the dying.
Mrs. Helmstedt lay on her back, with her head quite low, and her hands wandering gently over the white quilt, as if in search of some other clasping hands—sometimes murmuring softly to herself in calm delirium, and occasionally opening her eyes and looking around cognizantly, as though recognizing all who were present, and missing one who was not.
Nellie stood at her right hand, often bending anxiously over her.
Another hour passed; and still Marguerite Helmstedt lay in a state of gentle, whispering delirium, varied with brief lucid intervals. Was it in the former or the latter of these conditions that she breathed the name of her mother, then of her father, then of Nellie?
At the sound of her own name, Mrs. Houston bent to listen to her words.
“Nellie, dearest,” she murmured, very softly, “when prisoners die, their bodies are given up to their friends, are they not?”
“Yes, surely, dearest Marguerite, when they have friends to claim their bodies,” answered the lady, greatly wondering at the strange direction the dying woman’s delirium had now taken.
“And if they have not friends, then they are buried in the prison grounds, are they not?” continued Mrs. Helmstedt.
“Of course, I suppose so, dear Marguerite.”
“But, Nellie, I have friends to claim my body, after death, have I not?”
“What do you say, dearest?” inquired Mrs. Houston, bending closer down, for the voice of the dying was nearly extinct.
“I say, Nellie, dear, when my spirit flees, it would not leave this poor, racked frame behind in the prison. Claim my body, Nellie, and bury it anywhere! anywhere! out of this prison!”
“Yes, dearest Marguerite; be content; I will do it,” answered Mrs. Houston, soothingly, as she would have spoken to a maniac.
“What does she say?” asked old Mrs. Compton.
“Oh, nothing to any purpose, mother. She is wandering dreadfully in her mind,” whispered the unsuspicious Nellie. As if calmed by her friend’s promise, Mrs. Helmstedt lay perfectly quiet for a few moments, and then her fair, thin hand went wandering over the quilt, as if to clasp that other loving hand, and not meeting it, she opened her large, dark eyes, turning them about the dusky room, as if in search of some one; then she raised and fixed them, with a wild gaze, upon that sinister shadow that swooped over her head.
At this moment, the door was quietly opened, and Margaret entered. Her face had again changed. It now wore the look of one who had, in this short space of time, suffered, struggled and overcome—of one who had gazed steadily in the face of some appalling trial, and nerved her heart to meet it—the look, in short, of a martyr who had conquered the fear of torture and of death, and was prepared to offer up her life. But from this night, through all time, Margaret’s face never resumed its youthful character of simplicity and freedom.
On coming into the room, her eyes were at once turned toward her mother, and the first object that met their glance was the large, starry eyes fixed, as if magnetized, upon the swooping shadow on the ceiling.
Margaret went at once to the fireplace and removed the lamp from the hearth to the mantelpiece, and placed an alabaster shade over it, thus reducing the spectres, and bringing the unnatural relations of shadow and substance into harmony again. Then she went softly to her mother’s side and slipped her hand into that wandering hand, that now closed fondly and contentedly upon it. The clasp of her child’s slender fingers seemed to recall the wandering senses of Mrs. Helmstedt. Her dark eyes softened from their fixed and fiery gaze, as she turned then on her loving child, murmuring:
“Margaret! my little Margaret!”
And presently she said: “It is time you were at rest, dear friends. Bid me good-night. Margaret will lie down here by me. And we will sleep.”
No one seemed inclined to comply with this proposition, until Mrs. Helmstedt, looking annoyed, Dr. Hartley beckoned Margaret, who left her mother’s side for an instant, to hear what he had to say.
“My dear child, I myself am of the opinion that we had all best retire from the room. Shall you be afraid to stay here and watch alone?”
“Oh, no, doctor, no!”
“‘But not alone art thou, if One above doth guide thee on thy way.’ Very well; return to your watch, my child, and be sure, upon the least sign of change, to call me quietly. I shall stay in the next room.”
“Yes, doctor,” said Margaret, going softly back to her place.
“Come, friends, I think we had better retire and leave this child with her mother,” said the doctor.
“Bid me good-night first,” said Mrs. Helmstedt, as they all prepared to withdraw.
They all drew near her bed—Mrs. Houston nearest.
“You last, Nellie, you last, dear Nellie,” said Mrs. Helmstedt, as Mrs. Houston stooped to receive her kiss.
One by one they bade her good-night, and left the room. Mrs. Houston, by request, lingered longer.
“Come closer, Nellie—closer still—bend down,” whispered Mrs. Helmstedt, “I have one last favor to ask of you, dear Nellie. A trifle, yet I implore it. A foolish one, perhaps; for little may reck the soul, even if it survive, where or how the cast-off body lies. But do not lay me here, Nellie! Lay me at the feet of my father and mother, under the old trees at Plover’s Point. Do you promise me?”
“Yes, yes, dearest Margaret,” faltered Nellie, through her gushing tears.
“Now kiss me and go to bed. Good-night.”
Mrs. Houston left the room, and the mother and child were once more alone together.
“Are you sleepy, little Margaret?”
“No, dearest mamma.”
“I am, and so ought you to be, my dove. Come, loosen your wrapper; lie down on the bed beside me, and I will pat your little shoulder softly, until we both fall to sleep, as we used to do long ago, Margaret,” said Mrs. Helmstedt, speaking with a playfulness strange and incomprehensible to her child, who, though her heart seemed almost breaking, and though these tender words and acts weakened and unnerved her, prepared to comply. Once more she lay down by her mother’s side, and felt the gentle hand upon her neck, and the cooing voice in her ear, as that dying mother sought, as heretofore, to soothe her child to sleep.
Let us draw the curtain and leave them so.
The friends, dismissed from Mrs. Helmstedt’s deathbed, reassembled in the parlor. The doctor lingered there for a moment to take some little refreshment previous to resuming his watch in the spare room above.
“What do you think of her now, doctor?” inquired Mrs. Compton.
“I think, madam, that the quieter she remains the longer her life will last. She will live through the night probably—through the morrow possibly.”
The night indeed was far spent. No one thought of retiring to rest. The doctor took a lamp and a book, and went softly upstairs to sit and watch in the room adjoining Mrs. Helmstedt’s. And the party who were left below gathered around the little wood fire that, even at this season, the chilly nights on the bleak island rendered necessary.
Amid the distress and confusion that had reigned throughout the house since the mistress’ illness, no usual household duty, save only the getting of meals and the making of beds, had been attended to. Among other neglected matters, the window shutters had remained open all night. So that the first faint dawn of morning was plainly visible through the windows.
As soon as it was daylight the sad party separated—old Mrs. Compton going about to take upon herself, for the better comfort of the family, the supervision of domestic affairs, and Nellie stealing softly on tiptoe up to the death-chamber. Nevertheless, the watchful old physician heard, and came to speak to her at his own door.
“How has she passed the night, doctor?”
“In perfect repose, as far as I can judge.”
Nellie stole noiselessly into the room, softly took away the night lamp that was still burning, then gently opened a window to admit the fresh morning air, and finally went up to the bedside to gaze upon the mother and child. It was a touching picture. Both were sleeping. The shadows of death had crept more darkly still over Mrs. Helmstedt’s beautiful face, but she seemed to rest quietly, with one hand laid over Margaret’s shoulder, in a protecting, soothing manner. Margaret’s face had the troubled look of one who had been overcome by sleep, in the midst, and despite of great sorrow. As Nellie gazed, Mrs. Helmstedt, with the sensitiveness of the dying, perceived her presence, and opened her eyes.
“How are you, dear Marguerite?” inquired Nellie.
Her lips moved, and Nellie stopped to catch the faint murmur that came from them.
“Hush—sh! don’t wake her. It took so long to get her to sleep—and sleep is such a blessing.”
“Sleep is such a blessing!” These were the last words of Marguerite Helmstedt. Saying them, her eyes turned with unutterable love upon the little form sleeping beside her, and her hand essayed again its soothing part, but that dying hand was too feeble, and it slipped, powerless, from its work.
Margaret, at the same moment, opened her eyes, with that distressed, perplexed expression wherewith we first awake after a great sorrow. But in an instant all was remembered. Her mother dying since yesterday! Simultaneously with this anguish of recovered memory came that strange power of self-control, with which this young creature was so greatly endowed.
“How are you, sweet mother?” she asked, calmly.
The lips of the dying woman fluttered and faintly smiled, but no audible sound issued thence. Her powers of speech had failed. Margaret grew deadly pale.
“Do not be alarmed, and do not worry her with questions. She is very much exhausted. The doctor will give her a cordial presently,” said the pitying Nellie, seeking to conceal the terrible truth. But had she looked for an instant into that pale, resolute face she would not have feared any unseemly outburst of sorrow on the part of that young girl.
Nellie, assisted by Margaret, placed Mrs. Helmstedt in an easier position and arranged the bed drapery. Then, while old Mrs. Compton and Dr. Hartley paid a visit to the room, she took Margaret downstairs and constrained her to take a cup of coffee, that she might be able to attend upon her mother through the day, Nellie said. And upon this adjuration, Margaret forced herself to take some refreshment.
After that the young girl resumed her watch, and never again left her dying mother.
As yesterday passed, so passed this day, except that Mrs. Helmstedt was sinking faster. As yesterday, so to-day, she lay quietly, in a gentle, murmuring delirium, not one word of which was audible, but which flowed on in a continuous stream of inarticulate music. Her life waned with the day. Late in the afternoon, during a lucid interval, she signed her wish that all might depart from the room and leave her alone with her child.
And they went.
And as upon the night preceding, so upon this afternoon, at a sign from Mrs. Helmstedt, Margaret lay down beside her, as if consenting to take some rest. At another sign she drew her mother’s powerless hand over her own shoulder. And then, with a sigh of content, Mrs. Helmstedt closed her eyes as if to sleep.
The day was dying. The sun was sinking low on the horizon. In the parlor below the friends of the family were watching its slow but sure descent, and mentally comparing it with the steady decline of life in one above, and mournfully wondering whether she could live to see another sunrise.
In the recess of the beloved bay window Mrs. Helmstedt’s forsaken harp still stood in mournful splendor. The level beams of the setting sun, now shining through this window, touched the harp, drawing from its burnished frame responsive rays, “in lines of golden light.” A moment thus stood the harp in a blaze of quivering glory, and then, as a sheaf that is gathered up, the rays were all withdrawn, and the sun sunk below the horizon. Simultaneously, as if some awful hand had swept its strings, each chord of that harp in swift succession snapped, in a long, wild, wailing diapason of melody, that died in silence with the dying sun, as though all music, light and life went out together, forever. All arose to their feet and looked into each other’s faces, in awe-stricken silence. And the same instant a sudden, prolonged, despairing shriek rang through the house.
“It is Margaret! Something has happened!” exclaimed Ralph Houston, breaking the spell.
All immediately hurried upstairs with prophetic intimations of what had occurred.
They were right.
Marguerite Helmstedt was dead, and her daughter was distracted!
With matchless heroism Margaret had maintained her self-control until now; but the grief restrained for her idolized mother’s sake now broke all bounds—and raged, a wild, wild storm of sorrow. Who shall dare to approach her with words of comfort? Who, indeed, can console her? Not one of you, well-meaning friends; for you never sounded the depths of woe like hers. Not you, young lover; for in the passionate idolatry of her grief, she feels that to listen to your voice, beloved as it is, would, at this hour, be sacrilege to the presence of the dead. Not even you, holy, eloquent minister of God. Seek not to soothe her sorrow, any one of you. It were vain, and worse than vain. It was a mockery. Can you breathe the breath of life again into the cold bosom of the dead mother that lies in yonder chamber? Can you cause that stilled heart to beat? those closed eyes to open? those silent lips to speak and murmur softly, “My little Margaret, my dove?” In a word, can you raise the dead to life? If not, then go, and trouble her not with your commonplaces. Before the image of an only child, just orphaned of her mother, that merely human comforter who best comprehends her sorrow would stand the most confounded—dumb. Leave her to God. Only He who wounds can heal.
That afternoon, late as it was, Dr. Hartley set off for his home, to commence preparations for the burial; as, in accordance with Mrs. Helmstedt’s directions, she was to be laid beside her father and mother, in her ancestral resting-ground at Plover’s Point.
It was long before Margaret could be forced to leave her mother’s chamber, and then no one knew what to do with a child so lost in woe, until, at last, her old nurse, Hildreth, without venturing a single word of consolation, just lifted and bore her away from them all—bore her up to an old quiet attic, a sort of “chamber of desolation,” where she sat down and held her—still never breathing a word—only making of her own embracing arms a physical support for the fainting form, and her affectionate bosom a pillow for the weeping head. And so she held her for hours while she moaned and wept.
“Oh, mother, come back to me! I cannot bear it—I cannot! Oh, God, have mercy! Send her back to me! Thou canst do all things, dear God—send her back!” And sometimes: “Oh, mother! do you hear me? are you near me? where are you? Oh, take me with you! take me with you! I am your child, your heart’s child! I cannot live without you, I cannot! Oh, my mother, call me after you—call me, mother! Don’t you hear me—don’t you hear your child? Oh, mother, can’t you answer me—can’t you answer your child? Oh, no—you cannot—you cannot! and I am growing crazy!” And other wild words like these; to all of which old Hildreth listened without making any expostulation, uttering any rebuke, or offering any vain words of comfort. At last, when exhausted nature succumbed to a deep and trance-like sleep, old Hildreth carried her down and tenderly undressed and put her to bed, and sat watching hours while she slept.
The next morning, when Margaret opened her eyes, her grief awoke afresh. She wished to fly immediately to the side of her mother. But this was strictly forbidden. At last, partly because she had already shed such floods of tears, and partly because she made almost superhuman efforts to control herself, she restrained the outward expression of her grief, and went to Mrs. Houston and said:
“Let me see my mother. If you do not, I shall die. But if you do, I will be very quiet, I will not make a moan, nor shed a tear, nor utter a single complaint. Consider—when the coffin is once closed I shall never—never see her face or hold her hand again! Even now I can never more hear her voice or meet her eyes; but I can look upon her face, and hold her hands, and kiss her; but in a little while I cannot even do that. Consider then how precious, how priceless is every moment of a time so short; and let me go.”
Margaret spoke with so much self-control and forced calmness that her words and manner were strangely formal. And Mrs. Houston, deceived by them, consented to her wish.
And Margaret went down to the favorite parlor, where Mrs. Helmstedt was laid out. The shutters were all closed to darken the room; but the windows were up to ventilate it; and the breeze blowing through the Venetian blinds of the bay window played upon the broken harp, making a fitful moaning in strange harmony with the scene. Margaret reverently lifted the covering from the face of the dead, and pressed kiss after kiss upon the cold brow and lips. And then she took her seat by the side of her dead mother, and never left her again for a moment while she lay in that room.
The third day from that, being Saturday, the funeral took place. As it was to be a boat funeral, all the neighbors of the adjacent shores and islands sent or brought their boats. A large company assembled at the house. The religious services were performed in the parlor where the body had been first laid out.
After which the procession formed and moved down to the beach, where about fifty boats were moored. Not a single sail among them—all were large or small rowboats. The oars were all muffled, and the oarsmen wore badges of mourning on their sleeves.
The island boat, the Nereide, had had her sails and masts all taken away, and had been painted white, and furnished with a canopy of black velvet raised on four poles. The twelve oarsmen seated in it were clothed in deep mourning. Into this boat the coffin was reverently lowered. This was the signal for the embarkation of every one else. In twenty minutes every boat was ready to fall into the procession that was beginning to form. The boat containing the Rev. Mr. Wellworth and Dr. Hartley led the van. Then followed the Nereide, with its sacred freight. Behind that came The Pearl Shell, containing the orphaned girl, Mrs. Houston and Ralph.
After them came a skiff bearing Colonel and Mrs. Compton and Colonel Houston. Other boats, occupied by friends and acquaintances, and others still, filled with old family servants, followed in slow succession to the number of fifty boats or more.
Slowly and silently the long procession moved across the waters. It formed a spectacle solemn and impressive, as it was strange and picturesque.
The sun was near its setting when this funeral train reached Plover’s Point, an abrupt headland crowned with ancient forest trees, that nearly hid from sight the old graystone dwelling-house. On the west side of this bluff, under the shadows of great elms and oaks of a hundred years’ growth, the family resting place lay. Here the boats landed. The coffin was reverently lifted out. The foot procession formed and walked slowly up the hill. And just as the latest rays of the setting sun were flecking all the green foliage with gold, they gathered around her last bed, that had been opened under the shade of a mighty oak. There they lay her down to rest—
“There, where with living ear and eye
She heard Potomac’s flowing,
And through her tall, ancestral trees
Saw Autumn’s sunset glowing,
She sleeps, still looking to the West,
Beneath the dark wood shadow,
As if she still would see the sun
Sink down on wave and meadow.”