She died in his arms. In the stillness they heard her name again and
again softly spoken, as if he still would summon her from the apathy of
death. They saw him, in their sobbing, wait undiscouraged for his
answer from the lips that never would answer again.
If he had claimed her in her life he claimed her doubly in her death;
now, at least, she was altogether his. He laid her tenderly upon the
pillow and covering her hands, still clasping the crucifix, in his own
hands he knelt with his face buried in the counterpane.
Day was breaking when he kissed her and rose to his feet. When Dolly
went to him in the morning to learn his wishes she found him in his
room. Alice was to lie, he said, with the Kimberlys on the hill, in the
plot reserved for him. His sister assented tearfully. As to the
funeral, he asked Dolly to confer with the village priest. He directed
that only Annie and her own women should make Alice ready for the burial
and forbade that any stranger's hand should touch his dead.
She lay in the sunshine, on her pillow, after Annie had dressed her
hair, as if breathing. Kimberly went in when Annie came for him. He saw
how the touch of the maid's loving hands had made for her dead mistress
a counterfeit of sleep; how the calm of the great sleep had already come
upon her, and how death, remembering the suffering of her womanhood, had
restored to her face its girlish beauty. Hamilton, who was with him,
followed him into the room. Kimberly broke the silence.
"What _is_ First Communion, Hamilton?" he asked.
Hamilton shook his head.
"I think," Kimberly said, pausing, "it must be the expression upon her
face now."
During the day he hardly spoke. Much of the time he walked in the hall
or upon the belvedere and his silence was respected. Those of his
household asked one another in turn to talk with him. But even his
kindness repelled communication.
In the early morning when the white couch had been placed to receive her
for the grave he returned to the room with Dolly and they stood beside
Alice together.
"This is my wedding day, Dolly. Did you remember it?"
"Robert!"
"I tried for once to do better; to treat Alice as a woman should be
treated. This is my reward--my wedding day."
He lifted her in his arms like a child and as he laid her in her coffin
looked at her stonily. "My bride! My Alice!"
Dolly burst into tears. The harshness of his despair gave way as he
bent over her for the last time and when he spoke again the tenderness
of his voice came back. "My darling! With you I bury every earthly
hope; for I take God to witness, in you I have had all my earthly joy!"
He walked away and never saw her face again.
The unintelligible service in the church did not rouse him from his
torpor and he was only after a long time aware of a strange presence on
the altar. Just at the last he looked up into the sanctuary. Little
clouds of incense rising from a swinging thurible framed for an instant
the face of a priest and Kimberly saw it was the archbishop.
The prelate stood before the tabernacle facing the little church filled
with people. But his eyes were fixed on the catafalque and his lips
were moving in prayer. Kimberly watched with a strange interest the
slender, white hand rise in a benediction over the dead. He knew it was
the last blessing of her whom he had loved.
Dolly had dreaded the scene at the grave but there was no scene. Nor
could Kimberly ever recollect more than the mournful trees, the green
turf, and the slow sinking of a flowered pall into the earth. And at
the end he heard only the words of the archbishop, begging that they who
remained might, with her, be one day received from the emptiness of this
life into one that is both better and lasting.