Ethel Churchill/Chapter 74
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE LAST NIGHT WITH THE DEAD.
How awful is the presence of the dead!
The hours rebuked, stand silent at their side;
Passions are hushed before that stern repose;
Two, and two only, sad exceptions share—
Sorrow and love,—and these are paramount.
How deep the sorrow, and how strong the love!
Seeming as utterly unfelt before.
Ah! parting tries their depths. At once arise
Affection's treasures, never dreamed till then.
Death teaches heavy lessons, hard to bear;
And most it teaches us what we have lost,
In losing those who loved us.
Henrietta crowded a life's suffering into the next week. There is need of change, even with the dead; and each of the mournful rites preceding interment brought on a frantic outburst of sorrow. The placing the body in the coffin was a dreadful struggle; but when it became needful to screw down the lid, then, indeed, she felt that she had parted with her kind old uncle for ever. No entreaties could prevail on her to leave the room; she sat with her head enveloped in her mantle, her presence only indicated by a quick convulsive sob, at any pause in that peculiar and jarring sound. She had, on the second day, recognised, and spoken with her usual kindness to, the old servants; indeed, it was something of a consolation to gather every possible detail respecting her uncle. The account was soothing, rather than otherwise; he appeared in his usual health and spirits till the attack, which carried him off in two days. He had suffered but little pain; and his last words were a blessing on his beloved child.
"If he had but been spared a few hours," was her constant exclamation: "his last look, his last word—I could lay down my life to have had them!"
Ah! the tender and solemn farewell beside the bed of death is, indeed, a consolation to the survivor! There is nothing so soothing as to know that the last earthly wish has been confided to your fulfilment, the last expressions of earthly affection have been your own. The eyes closing to their last cold sleep, rested upon you, and were glad to rest; and your prayers were the latest music in the weary ear. It is some comfort to think that you sacrificed even your own sorrow in the beloved presence; and the thousand sad, slight offices, are remembered with such melancholy tenderness. But all this was denied to Henrietta, and hers was a nature to feel their privation most acutely; sensitive and affectionate, she exaggerated their omission with all the bitterness of self-reproach.
At length the day of the funeral came; and, till the coffin was carried to the hearse, Lady Marchmont never felt that she was quite parted from her uncle. She saw him, even as she had last gazed upon him, pale, cold, and awful; but still he was there. The coffin was to her like a shrine; all that she held most dear and most precious was within its dark and silent sanctuary. She sat in the room; she saw them bear it away: with one strong and convulsive effort she rose, for nothing could prevent her following her more than father to the grave.
All parade had been avoided by Sir Jasper's express orders; but the poor of the whole neighbourhood gathered to pay the last respect to the remains of their friend and benefactor. The churchyard was crowded; and yet so deep was the stillness, that not one word was lost of the burial-service. Afterwards, it was a pleasure to Lady Marchmont to think of the affection evinced towards her uncle; but, at the time, the numbers oppressed her: she would have given worlds to have been alone in the churchyard. With an agony too great for endurance, she heard the ropes creak as they lowered the coffin into the ground; and when the gravel rattled on the lid, it struck too upon her heart. To her dying hour she was haunted by the fearful sound; it came upon her ear in the stillness of night, making her start from her restless pillow; and often did she hear it, amid light and music, turning her pale with the image of death even while surrounded by gaiety and festival. But when they went to tread down the earth, it seemed to her like sacrilege; and, forgetting every thing in one strong emotion, she sprang forward to prevent it. The effort was too much; and, for the first time, she sank back in the arms of the servants in strong hysterics!
She was carried home quite exhausted; the only sign she gave of consciousness was, that when they were about to take her to the room which had formerly been her own, she raised her head, and feebly insisted on being taken to her uncle's. Every thing there was peculiarly his, and there she had gazed, for the last time, on his inanimate features; in that room she could call up his image more distinctly than elsewhere. The presence of the dead was around her, and it was dearer than aught else in the world beside.