Was it her corpse that he bore for miles,
When he gladly dreamt of her grateful smiles?
Silently, as he bore her on,
Her soul from its gentle frame has gone,
And never on earth shall his heart discover
The moment her love and her life were over.
* * * *
Lay her i’ the earth;
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!
SHAKSPEARE.
Castleton had passed all that night in wakeful solitude. He had
dismissed his servant early, as if to write; but instead, had watched
through the sleepless hours, absorbed in somewhat tardy reflections
on the state to which he had reduced himself. How many prospects,
which opening life had shown him in perspective, had he unaccountably
missed in the actual attainment! How many sources of happiness had
been dried up, whilst he, instead of partaking of their spontaneous
flow, had been refining over-much on their component qualities. Too
true it was, that he, the favoured child of nature and fortune,
had signally failed, both in securing his own happiness, and in
contributing to that of others: and yet, in the result, he had no one
but himself to blame.
The silence of the hour, and the sad abstraction of his thoughts
conspired to invest any extraneous object, which should force his
attention, with the morbid impressions of his imagination. The fitful
gusts of the moaning wind seemed to speak a solemn and piteous
warning to him. He rose and drew aside the window-curtains. The dim
and struggling dawn had just begun to win its hard-fought way through
the dense masses of fast-rolling clouds, which rushed onwards to
oppose its progress. For one moment he felt freshened, as he exposed
his burning brow to the driving rain. Looking forth, he beheld at his
own door, a houseless mendicant, with a child in her arms, crouching
for shelter; and as he dropt a coin into her hand, he thought, “Poor
wretch! your sorrows are not of your own devising. One ought to be
thankful, that neither oneself, nor a beloved one, is exposed to such
a night as this.”
He had hardly again closed the window, when a noise was heard below,
and Carter, who had been staying with him lately, rushed into the
room, evidently endeavouring, but in vain, through his consternation
and distress, so to collect himself, as to be able to break to his
patron some dreadful news.
“O my Lord! prepare for the worst. My Lady!--they’re bringing her
here!--but it’s all over.”
Before he could at all relieve Castleton’s agonizing suspense, the
frantic figure of George stood before them; his eyes staring wildly,
and his drenched appearance showing from whence he had just emerged.
“She’s dead!--she’s dead! You’ll look your last on her now; and
cursed be the hour when you first beheld her!”
“Hold, man!” said Carter; “respect his feelings.”
“His feelings! what were his feelings for her compared with mine? Who
was it, who, in the moment of danger was present, to struggle for her
safety? He who had sworn to love, honour, and protect her, or her
despised and neglected cousin?”
The agony of Castleton, as the truth broke upon him, was too intense
for utterance, and prevented interruption; George, therefore,
proceeded half raving, “But for that hideous breaker which forced
us asunder, she might still have been saved. I stretched forth my
hand to renew my protecting hold, and this met my gripe, and snapped
within it,” putting his hand into his breast, and producing the gold
chain and little watch before referred to;--“your first fatal gift;”
and with that recollection, he raised it in his hand furiously, as
if preparing to dash it to the ground; but checking himself, he
added, “No; it was her last thought, the last request she made!” and,
kissing it solemnly, he placed it on the table before Castleton.
“Once more I felt that I had her safe. In vain the breakers a second
time strove to separate us; or, perhaps they only roared in mockery
at my reviving hopes. I rushed through the surf, as I thought in
triumph;--she was already dead!”
The mournful procession now arrived, bearing in a litter the lifeless
form of Lucy. There was on her no trace of death, beyond the mere
absence of life. Placid, as still in sleep, she lay without as yet
the paleness of a corpse; no disorder in her appearance, except the
streaming locks of her long fair hair, which, darkened and clotted
with moisture, hung in tangled masses over her features. There was
no symptom of a struggle on her part; but it seemed rather as if,
trusting, under Providence, to the efforts of him who would have
saved her if he could, she yielded her spirit to the issue; those
lips, through which might never more pass the slightest breath to
stir a feather, or dull a mirror, were calmly closed, not forcibly
compressed: the expression of her whole countenance was perfect
repose.
As they, who had brought her into the presence of her husband,
deposited their burthen, one arm dropped from her side, and hung
stiffly down to the ground. Castleton earnestly regarded it: there
was the hand on which he had placed the wedding-ring; and, as he
pressed it between his, already cold and clammy as it was, the idea
that first roused him from his stupor into which the sudden shock had
plunged him was, that she might yet be saved; such things had been
done before.
With wonderful precision he gave the requisite orders for attempting
to restore animation. George, who had for some time remained silent,
on hearing this, cried out with a bitter smile, “As if I would have
left her for a moment, had I not too surely known that there was no
longer such a chance.”
He was right: after many hours’ useless endeavours, all were obliged
to own that their efforts were vain.
George had, in the mean time, been in the first paroxysms of a brain
fever; through all the stages of which Castleton attended him with
the affectionate care of a brother; and when he was pronounced out
of danger, prepared to follow the corpse of poor Lucy to Somersby,
where she was to be interred in the family vault. As the orders which
Castleton had in his first despair given, that every possible honour
should be paid to her remains, were to be acted on by interested
parties, they had been too extravagantly fulfilled; and though, in
the stupor of grief, the chief mourner was as unconscious of any of
the surrounding splendours, as the corpse in whose honour they were
collected, yet she, to whom in life pomp had been her only bane,
was borne unconsciously along with princely and almost unparalleled
pageantry.
Castleton’s first care, upon somewhat recovering his composure, was
to exert all his influence to advance George in his profession.
In his wishes to serve the farmer and his sister, though equally
sincere, he was not equally successful. Nothing could persuade them
to leave Bankside, where they remained together, still mourning their
bereavement.
As to Castleton himself, I have too much respect for the intensity
of his present grief, aggravated in his case by bitter feelings
of self-reproach, to anticipate the date when that elasticity of
spirit, which is the never-failing attribute of the human mind,
shall have enabled him to struggle with his present depression, and
imparting its buoyancy, as it will do whenever the heart’s core has
not been completely crushed, shall, with the assistance of time, have
triumphed over mortal sorrow.
THE END.
LONDON:
IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. These were left unchanged, as were jargon,
dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings. Ten misspelled words
were corrected. The word ‘to’ was added to “... sit next [to] Lady
...”
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores,
_like this_. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside
down, reversed, or partially printed letters and punctuation,
were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Duplicate words at line endings were
removed.