A SHATTERED COLUMN.
In mid June came the blow. George brought up from the post-office, one
evening, the following letter:
"PAINESVILLE, June 18, 1837. BARTON RIDGELEY, ESQ.:
"_Dear Sir_,--I write at the request of my sister, Mrs. Hitchcock. Your
brother is very ill. Wanders in his mind, and we are uneasy about
him. He has been sick about a week. Mr. Hitchcock is absent at court.
Sincerely yours,
Edward Marshall."
"Henry is ill," said Barton, very quietly, after reading it. "This
letter is from Mrs. Hitchcock. He has been poorly for a week. I think
I had better go to him."
"He did not write himself, it seems," said his mother.
"He probably doesn't regard himself as very sick, and did not want
us sent for," said Bart, "and they may have written without his
knowledge. I will take Arab, and ride in the cool of the night."
"You are alarmed, Barton, and don't tell me all. Read me the letter."
And he read it. "I will go with you, Barton," very quietly, but
decidedly.
"How can you go, mother?"
"As you do," firmly.
"You cannot ride thirty miles on horseback, mother, even if we had a
horse you could ride at all."
"I shall go with you," was her only answer.
An hour later, with a horse and light buggy, procured from a neighbor,
they drove out into the warm, sweet June night. At Chardon, they
paused for half an hour, to breathe the horse, and went on. Bart was
a good horseman, from loving and knowing horses, and drove with skill
and judgment. They talked little on the road, and at about two in the
morning they drove up to the old American House in Painesville, and,
with his mother on his arm, Barton started out on River Street, to the
residence of Mr. Hitchcock.
How silent the streets! and how ghostly the white houses stood, in the
stillness of the night! and how like a dream it all seemed! They had
no difficulty in finding the house, with its ominous lights, that had
all night long burned out dim into the darkness.
The door was open, and the bell brought a sweet, matronly woman to
receive them.
"We are Henry Ridgeley's mother and brother," said Barton. "Is he
still alive?"
The question indicated his utter hopelessness of his brother's
condition.
"Come in this way, into the parlor," said the lady; and stepping out,
"Mother," she called, "Mr. Ridgeley's mother has come. Please step
this way."
A moment later, a tall, elderly lady, sad-faced as was her daughter,
and much agitated, entered the room.
"My mother," said the younger lady. "I am Mrs. Hitchcock."
"Your son--" said the elder lady.
"Take me to him at once, I pray you! Let me see him! I am his mother!
Who shall keep me from him?"
"Mother," said Barton, stepping up and placing his hands about her,
"don't you feel it? Henry is dead. I knew it ere we stepped in."
"Dead! who says he is dead? He is not dead!"
"Tell her," said Barton; "she is heroic: let her know the worst."
"Take me to him!" she said, as they remained silent.
Up the stairs, in a dimly-lighted room, past two or three young men,
and a kind neighbor or two, they conducted her; and there, composed
as if in slumber, with his grand head thrown back, and his fine strong
face fully upward, she found her third-born, growing chill in death.
She sprang forward--arrested herself when within a step of him, and
gazed. The light passed from her own eye, and the warmth from her
face; a spasm shook her, and nothing more.
She did not shriek; she did not faint; she made no outcry,--scarcely
a visible sign; but steadily and almost stonily she gazed on her dead,
until the idea of the awful change came fully to her. The chill passed
from her face and manner; and seating herself on the bed,--"You won't
mind me, ladies. You can do no more for him. Leave him to me for a
little;" and she bent over and kissed his pallid lips, and laid her
face tenderly to his, and lifted with her thin fingers the damp masses
of his hair, brown and splendid, like Bart's, but darker, and without
the wave.
"What a grand and splendid man you had become, Henry! and I may toy
with and caress you now, as when you were a soft and beautiful baby,
and you will permit me!" and lifting herself up, she steadfastly gazed
at his emaciated face and shrunken temples, and opening his bosom, and
baring its broad and finely-formed contour, she scanned it closely.
"Oh, why could not I see and know, and be warned! I thought he could
not die! Oh, I thought that all I had would remain! that in their
father God had taken all he would reclaim from me! that I should go,
and together we should adorn a place where they should come to us! Oh,
Merciful Father!" and the storm of agony, such as uproots and sweeps
away weak natures, came upon her.
As for Barton, his sensibilities were stunned and paralyzed, while
his mind was left to work free and clear. All his anguish was for his
mother; for himself, the moment had not come. He was appalled to feel
the almost indifference with which he looked upon the remains of
his manly and high-souled brother, and he repeated over and over to
himself: "Henry is dead! he is dead! Don't you hear? don't you know?
He is dead! Why don't you mourn?"
An hour later, came a gentle tap at the door. Barton went to find Mrs.
Hitchcock standing there.
"Your mother must be aroused and taken away. My mother and I will take
you to her house. She must be cared for now."
"Mother," said Bart, taking her lightly in his arms, "these dear good
ladies must care for you. Let me take you out; and our dear Henry must
be cared for, too."
How unnatural his voice sounded to him! Had he slain his brother, that
he should care so little?--that his voice should sound so hoarse and
hollow?
His mother was passive in his hands,--wearied, broken, and
overwhelmed. He carried her across a small open space, and into a
large house, where her kind hostess received and cherished her as only
women experienced and chastened by sorrow can.
Barton was conducted to a spacious, cool room, luxurious to his eyes;
yet he felt no weariness, but somehow supernaturally strained up to an
awful tension.
"Why don't I shriek, and tear my hair, and make some fitting moan over
this awful loss? Why can't I feel it? O God! am I a wretch without
nature, or heart, or soul? He is dead! Why should he die, and now,
plucked and torn up by the root, just at flowering? What a vile
economy is this! what a waste and incompleteness! and the world full
of drivellers and dotards, that it would gladly be quit of. Wasn't
there space and breath for him? Why should such qualities be so
bestowed, to be so wasted? Why kindle such a light, to quench it so
soon in the dark river? What a blunder! Why was not I taken?"
Why? Oh, weak, vain questioner!
He threw off part of his clothing, and lay down on the bed and slept.
He awoke, offended and grieved that the sun should shine. Why was
it not hidden by thick clouds, and why should they not weep? But why
should they, if he did not? And what business had the birds to be
glad and joyous, and the perfume of flowers to steal out on the bright
air?
He knew he was wrong. He was no longer angry and defiant, but his
grief was dry and harsh, and his sensibilities creaked like a dry
axle.
He found his mother tender, calm, and pitying him. Awful as was the
bereavement to her, she felt that the loss was, after all, to him.
Her strong nature, quivering and bleeding under the blow, had righted
itself, and the sweet influence of faith and hope was coming up in
her heart. She saw Barton with his pallid face, and steady but bright
eyes. She knew that she never quite understood, had never quite
fathomed, his nature.
Gentle voices, assuaging hands, and sweet charities were about the
stricken ones; and pious hands, with all Christian observances,
ministered to their beautiful dead. Nothing more could be done; and
before mid-day Barton, with his mother, started on their return, to
be followed at evening by the remains of the loved one, arrayed for
sepulture.
Barton, with every faculty of mind intensely strong and clear, and
weighted with the great calamity to absolute gravity, had struck those
he met as a marvel of clear apprehension and perception of all the
surroundings and proprieties of his painful position. The younger
members of the Painesville Bar, who had begun to know and love their
young brother, had gathered about him in his illness, and now came
forward to take charge of and prepare his remains for final rest, and
to render to his friends the kindness of refined charity. Barton knew
that somehow they looked curiously at him, as he introduced himself to
them, and fancied that his dazed and dreamy manner was singular; but
knew that such considerate and kind, such brotherly young men, would
make allowances for him.
When they gathered silently to take leave, he turned: "Gentlemen, you
know our obligations to you. Think of the most grateful expression
of them, and think I would so express them if I could. Some day I may
more fittingly thank you."
They thought he never could. He remembered the fitting words to Mrs.
Hitchcock and her mother, Mrs. Marshall, and drove away, with his
pale, silent mother.
All the way home in a dream. Something awful had happened, and it was
not always clear what it was, or how it had been brought about.