THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
There was a great crowd out to attend the funeral of Abelard Lyle, and,
long before the hour appointed for the services, Mrs. Fordham’s cottage
was filled to overflowing, as were also the yard and street in front,
and it was with some difficulty the Schuyler family could make their way
through the dense mass of people.
They came late, and little Godfrey had a knot of crape upon his arm,
while Mrs. Schuyler wore a black silk, with no shade of color to relieve
her sallow face, and she looked, with her high-bred city air, very much
out of place, and very much bored, too, as if she wished it well over,
and wondered why her husband should take so much trouble for a poor
young man, and an entire stranger. And yet Lady Emily was not without
kindly feelings, and she felt very grateful to Abelard Lyle, and very
sorry that he should have lost his life in saving that of her son; and,
at her husband’s suggestion, she had been to the cottage the day before
to see that everything was right, and had spoken civilly to Mrs.
Fordham, and asked for some more roses, saying:
“I have had some once to-day. I was driving by just before the terrible
accident, and saw such a lovely young girl,—your daughter, I suppose?”
“Yes, my daughter,” Mrs. Fordham replied, a new hope rising within her
that through the Schuylers Heloise might make her way to distinction.
Heloise had a headache, she said, else she would like so much for Mrs.
Schuyler to see her, and she thanked her for speaking so kindly of her,
and hoped she would call again when the funeral was over.
To all this Lady Emily pretended to listen and nod assent, and, when she
had all the roses she cared for, she said good-morning, and went back to
the hotel, where she recounted the particulars of her call to the
English maid, with whom she was on very familiar terms.
“Such assurance,” she said, “as that woman has! Why, she talked to me as
if I were her equal, and even asked me to call again. She wanted me to
see her daughter,—that beautiful young girl whom we saw in our drive
this morning. Did I tell you that is where they have taken the young
man? I should not be surprised if he were the lover of the girl, only
she looked so very young. It seems to me I must have seen her before.”
The appearance of Colonel Schuyler brought to an end the lady’s
conversation with Janette, and turning to her husband, she asked where
they were intending to bury the young man.
“In our own family lot,” was the reply; and then Lady Emily dropped the
flowers she was arranging, and her eyes opened wider than their wont,
and fixed themselves upon her husband with a look of incredulity as she
said: “Why, Howard, you must be crazy! Surely there are places enough
without putting him there.”
“Yes, I know; but, Emily, consider for a moment,—he saved our boy’s
life, and I feel like paying him every possible respect, and have
ordered his grave to be made just under the pine tree at the far side of
the lot. There is room enough between for all the Schuylers who will
ever be buried there.”
Lady Emily knew from experience that when her husband’s mind was made
up, it was useless to argue with him, so she said no more, but thought
within herself that when her time came to die, she would request that
her aristocratic flesh be laid in Greenwood beside the Rossiters, and
not on Schuyler Hill, in that little yard where a few gray, time-worn
stones marked the last resting-place of such of the Schuylers as were
buried there, and where Abelard Lyle was to be taken. Colonel Schuyler
was in one sense as proud as his wife, but with his pride he had much
good sense and genuine kindness of heart. But for Abelard Lyle he would
have lost his bright-faced boy, and he felt truly grateful to the young
man, and resolved to show him every possible respect. So he ordered the
funeral himself, and sent to the cottage a handsome rosewood coffin, and
was in and out several times to see that all was right, and when the
hour for the services arrived, drove down with his wife and son, and
enacted the part of chief, and, indeed, only mourner, for Abelard had no
relatives, and Mrs. Fordham was too much afraid of being identified with
“that class of people” to admit of any great manifestation of feeling on
her part. For the sake of the mother country, and because he had been
kind to her on the ship, she had allowed the body to be brought to her
house, but she managed to impress every one with the great distance
there was between herself and the dead man, who looked so calm and
peaceful, and handsome in his elegant coffin, with a half-opened rose
upon his breast. Mrs. Fordham had put it there at Heloise’s request; but
Heloise herself had taken no part in anything, or even seen the body.
She had abandoned the idea of going to the grave and startling the
people with her story, as she had meant to do the previous day. The pain
in her head was too great to admit of her sitting up, and during the
entire day she never once appeared below, but lay on the bed in her
chamber, with her aching head buried in the pillow, and the faded,
blood-stained rose hidden away in her bosom. She heard the people as
they assembled in the house and yard below, and knew when the Schuylers
came by the suppressed hush among the crowd. She heard, too, the
clergyman’s voice as he read the burial service, and when they carried
the body out she arose from her bed and through the half-closed shutters
watched the funeral procession as it moved up the road, to the top of
Schuyler Hill, where the open grave was waiting for all that was mortal
of Abelard Lyle. Heloise could not pray then, her heart was so hard and
rebellious, and ached so with a sense of actual pain, and loss, and a
horrid fear of what might be in the future; and once when this fear got
the mastery of her she arose, and going to her private drawer, where she
kept her hidden treasures, took from it a box, in which she sought for
and found, as she supposed, the instrument which was to help her in the
hour of need, when she told the world what she must ere long tell. With
trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and felt herself grow cold and
faint, when she saw that instead of the article which was to prove her
innocent and pure, she held only a receipt for goods bought and paid for
by her mother in New York. Search as she might, she could not find the
document she sought. That was gone, how or where she could not guess
until she remembered having burned some waste papers accumulating in her
drawer, only a few days before. She had it then and read it over, and
supposed she laid it back in the box where she always kept it, but she
must have put in its place the receipt which was folded and looked much
like it, and burned the only evidence she had that she was not the
wicked thing she felt herself to be as she sank upon the floor and
wished that she could die. It was terrible to see such grief in one so
young, for Heloise, though well grown and tall, was little more than
fifteen, and her face when in repose was the face of a child. But it
seemed old now, and gray, and pinched with that look of anguish upon it,
mingled with something akin to shame, as she crouched upon the floor and
whispered to herself:
“What if mother and the world do not believe me?” Then swift as thought
the answer came: “I’ll drown myself in the river;” and sitting upright
upon the floor, the young girl went through in fancy with all the
sickening details which such a catastrophe would involve. The anxiety of
the mother, the alarm, the search for her body, the finding it at last,
and the coroner’s inquest, where possibly her secret would be discovered
and she be disgraced all the same.
“No, no,” she moaned, “better live and fight it out, knowing I am
innocent, than carry a sullied name to a suicide’s grave.”
“And lose your soul,” something whispered in her ear, making her start
with a new horror as she remembered the hereafter she had in her madness
almost forgotten.
Falling upon her knees, she sobbed, “Lead me not into temptation, but
deliver me from evil.”
That was all she could say, but Jesus knew what she meant,—knew that she
wanted help, and He helped her as He always does when asked aright, and
her heart ceased to throb so painfully, and the hard look left her face,
and the tears came to her relief as she said:
“I know I am innocent, and so does God; and I’ll tell mother the truth,
keeping nothing back.”
Heloise had risen now, and with trembling hands was binding up her
beautiful hair of golden brown, which Abelard had admired so much, and
which she, too, knew was wonderful for its brightness and luxuriance.
Would she ever care for it again? she asked herself, as she put it away
under a net where not even a single curl could find its way to neck or
brow, when suddenly, as if it had been a vision, she saw an elegant room
which seemed to be at Schuyler Hill, and in that room a lady of
marvellous beauty, with a face like her own, save that it was older and
more mature,—a lady, clad in satin and lace, with jewels in her flowing
hair and on her snowy neck, and to herself she said:
“That’s I. How came I there?”
Then the mist, if mist it was, which had for a moment clouded her mind,
lifted, and she was herself again,—Heloise Fordham, standing in her own
humble room and making herself ready for the meeting with her mother,
and the confession she meant to make before she slept again.
I was at the funeral and saw Abelard in his coffin, and thought how
dreadful it was to die so far from home and have no tears shed for me,
for there were none shed for him. Everybody looked sorry, and sober, and
shocked, Colonel Schuyler particularly so, and Lady Emily put her fine
cambric handkerchief to her eyes when the rector spoke of the noble deed
which never could be forgotten by those for whom it was done; but she
did not cry, I know, for I was watching her, and I wanted to shake
little Godfrey, who, though he was very subdued and quiet, actually
nodded in his high chair before the remarks were over.
It was a sad funeral and a big funeral, but one void of genuine
heartache, save as one young heart upstairs was breaking, and of this I
did not then know.
Although more than two years the junior of Heloise, I perhaps knew her
better than any one else. Intimate friends she had not, but between her
and myself an acquaintance had sprung up, born of our common love for
flowers and rambles by the river side. We had exchanged slips of roses
and geraniums, and talked over the gate of our flower-beds, and once,
when caught in a rain-storm, she had taken tea with us and delighted us
all with her pretty, ladylike manners and soft, gentle speech. I was
charmed with her, and having, as I believed, a secret of hers in my
possession, I felt greatly interested in her, and when at the funeral I
missed her and heard of the sick headache which was keeping her
upstairs, I had my own private opinion with regard to the cause of that
headache, and with all the curiosity of a girl of thirteen, determined
upon seeing her and judging for myself how a girl looked who had lost
her lover. Accordingly I lingered after the funeral, and when the people
were gone and I had taken several turns in the garden I ventured up the
stairs to her room and knocked softly at her door.
“Come in,” was spoken in a frightened tone, and I went in and found her
standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her head and
her eyes fixed upon the door with an expression of alarm.
At sight of me, however, they changed at once, and with a smile she
said:
“Oh, it’s you. I thought it was mother.”
“No, she hasn’t had time to come back yet,” I replied; and then, touched
by the look of her white face, I burst out: “Oh, Heloise, isn’t it
terrible, and he so young and handsome? I am so sorry for you.”
“Hush-sh,” she said, in a tone of alarm. “Why are you sorry for me? Why
should any one be more sorry for me than for another?”
She was gazing fixedly at me, and, impelled by something I could not or
did not try to resist, I replied:
“Because,—because I guess he was your beau.”
Heloise’s eyes were almost black now in her excitement, and her voice
was husky as she said:
“You guess he was my beau! Why do you guess so? What business have you
to guess so? Tell me, child.”
She seemed many years my senior then, and in obedience to her question I
answered:
“I’ve seen him look at you just as brother Tom looks at Samantha
Blackmer, and he’s her beau; and then I saw him kiss you once down by
the river, that time I came upon you suddenly, you remember; but I never
told. He was your beau, wasn’t he?”
She did not answer for a moment but her lips moved as if she were trying
to speak, and at last she said:
“No, he was not my beau, Ettie (that was my pet name twenty years ago,
before I was the village schoolmistress)—Ettie, I believe you like me,
and I want—I want—you—to,—oh, Ettie, if ever people say bad things of me
don’t you believe them, but stand by me, won’t you?”
She had both my hands in hers, and was looking straight into my eyes
with an expression which half-frightened me out of my wits, as I told
her I would stand by her, without, however, knowing at all what she
meant. I was a little proud to be thus appealed to, and when the fixed
expression of her face gave way and the tears began to roll down her
cheeks, I cried too from sympathy and tried to comfort her and made her
lie down upon her bed, and when she was more quiet sat by her until I
heard her mother’s step below. Then I took my leave, for I was afraid of
Mrs. Fordham, whom I met on the stairs, and whose face I fancied looked
brighter and more cheerful than faces usually do when returning from a
grave.