University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

With a stunned mind and most miserable feelings,
I was almost led away by Colonel Grafton to
his dwelling. For three days I could resolve on
nothing. In that time we committed William to
the earth. A quiet spot under a clump of venerable
oaks, which the Colonel had chosen for his own final
resting place, afforded one to my friend. The heavy
moss depended from the trees above him, and the
warm sun came to his turf in subdued glances
through the withered leaves. Birds had built their
nests from time immemorial in their boughs, and
the constant rabbit might be seen leaping in the long
yellow grasses beneath them when the dusky shadows
of evening were about to fall. The hunter never
crept to this spot to pursue his game of death.
The cruel instrument of his sport was forbidden to
sound therein. The place was hallowed to solemn
sleep and to the brooding watchfulness of happy

spirits, and in its quiet round we left the inanimate
form of one whose heart had been as lovely in its
performances, as to the eye were the serene shadows
of the spot where we laid him. I envied him the
peace which I was sure his spirit knew, when we
put his body out of sight. God help me, for truly
there was little that felt like peace in mine.

For three days, as I said before, I was like one
stunned and deafened. I had no quickness to perceive,
nor ability to examine. My thoughts were
a perfect chaos, and continual and crowding images
of death were passing before my eyes. The kind
friends with whom I lingered during this brief but
most painful period, did all in their power to console
me. They spared no attentions, they withheld
no consideration, that might have been gratifying
to the bruised and broken spirit. And yet no ministerings
could have been more judicious than were
theirs. The work of kindness was never out of
place. There was nothing intrusive in their 'tendance,
but a general fitness of speech and gesture, so
far as I perceived them, extended through the movements
of the whole family. Colonel Grafton, with
a proper considerateness, entirely forbore the subject
of my loss; his words were few and well timed; and
though they were not directly addressed to my
griefs, their tendency was to administer to them.
If his good sense made him avoid a rude tenting of

the wound, he did not fall into the opposite error of
seeking to make light of it. His countenance had
a subdued gravity upon it, which softened into
sweetness a face in which benignity and manliness
were evenly mingled, elevating and qualifying one
another, and his language was given to subjects belonging
to the general interests of humanity which
the mourner might very well apply to his affliction
without being curiously seen to do so. Mrs. Grafton's
cares were no less considerate than his. My
mother could not so keenly have studied my feelings
nor so kindly have administered to them. Julia,
too, seemed to grow less shy than usual, and sat
down like a confiding child beside me, bringing me
her work to look at, and unfolding to me the most
valued stores of her little library. Sorrow has no
sex, and woman becomes courageous to serve in
affliction, the man whom she would tremble, in
prosperity, barely to encounter. Her lover made
his appearance but once during my stay, and remained
but a short time, so that I had her company
in several of my sad rambles. Somehow, I felt my
greatest source of consolation in her. It is probable
that we derive strength from the contemplation of a
weakness which is greater than our own. I felt it
so with me. The confiding dependence of this
lovely girl—her appeals to my superior information
—taught me at moments to lose sight of my cares:
and, perhaps, as she saw this, with the natural arts
of her sex, she became more confiding—more a
child.

At length, I started from my stupor. I grew
ashamed of my weakness. To feel our losses is becoming
enough—to yield to them and sink under
their pressure is base and unmanly. I was vexed
to think that Colonel Grafton should have so long
beheld me in the feeble attitude of grief. I was determined
to resume my character.

“I must go,” I exclaimed; “I must leave you
to-morrow, Colonel.”

It was thus I addressed him on the evening of the
third day after the family had retired for the night.

“Where will you go?” he asked. The question
staggered me. Where was I to go? Should I return
to Marengo? Should I be the one to carry suffering
to the poor girl whom fate had defrauded of her
lover? Could I have strength to speak the words of
doom and misery? Impossible! On my own account
I had no reason to return. I had nothing to seek in
that quarter—no hopes to invite my steps—no duty
(so I fancied then) to impel me to retrace a journey
begun with so much boldness, and, so far, pursued
with so much ill fortune.

“I will not return,” my heart said within me.
“I dare not. I cannot look on Catharine again. It
was my pleadings and persuasions, that made her

lover my companion in this fatal adventure, and how
can I meet her eye of reproach? How can I hear
her ask—`Where is he?—why have you not
brought him back to me?' Well did I remember
her parting directions—`Take care of one another.'
Had I taken care of him? I was the more prudent,
the more thoughtful and suspicious. I knew him
to be careless, frank, free, confiding. Had I taken
due care of him? Had I been as watchful as I
should have been? Had I not suffered him heedlessly
to plunge into the toils when a resolute word
of mine would have kept him from them?”

I could not satisfy myself by my answer to these
self proposed questions, and I resolved to go forward.

“In the wilds of Mississippi I will bury myself.
The bosom of the `Nation' shall receive me. I
will not look on Marengo again. I will write to
Catharine—I will tell her in a letter what I dare
not look her in the face and speak.”

Such was my resolve—a resolve made in my
weakness and unworthy of a noble mind. When I
declared it to Colonel Grafton, with the affectionate
interest and freedom of a father, he opposed it.

“Pardon me, my young friend, but are you right
in this resolution? Is it not your duty to go back
and declare the circumstances to all those who are
interested in the fate of your friend? It will be

expected of you. To take any other course will
seem to show a consciousness of error with which
you cannot reproach yourself. Suspicion will become
active, and your reluctance, which springs
from a natural dislike to give pain, will be set down
to other and far less honourable motives. Go back,
Mr. Hurdis—seek the friends of Mr. Carrington
and your own. Though it wring your heart to tell
the cruel story, and rend theirs to hear it, yet withhold
nothing. Take the counsel of one who has
seen too much of the world not to speak with due
precaution, and avoid concealment in all matters of
this sort. Suppress nothing—let nothing that is at
all equivocal be coupled with your conduct where
it affects the interests of others. I have never yet
known an instance of departure from duty in which
the person did not suffer from such departure. And
it is your duty to relate this matter at large to those
who were connected with your friend.”

“But I will write, Colonel Grafton—I will write
all and withhold nothing. My duty to the friends
and relatives of William Carrington cannot call for
more.”

“Your duty to yourself does. It requires that
you should not shrink from meeting them. Your
letter would tell them nothing but bald facts. They
must see you when you give your testimony. They
must see that you feel the pain, that your duty

calls upon you to inflict. When you show them
that, you give them the only consolation which
grief ever demands; you give them sympathy, and
their sorrows become lessened as they look on yours.
To this poor maiden, in particular, you owe it.”

“Ah! Colonel Grafton, you cannot know the torture
which must follow such an interview. It was
I who persuaded him to go on this hapless journey.
She heard me plead with him to go—my arguments
convinced him. She will look on me as the cause
of all—she will call me his murderer.”

“You must bear it all, and bear it with humility
and without reply. If she loved this youth, what
is your torture to that which your words will inflict
on her? You have the selfish strength and resources
of the man to uphold you—what has she?
Nothing—nothing but the past.—Phantoms of memory
are all that are left to her, and these torture
as often as they soothe. Do not speak then of your
sufferings in comparison with hers. She must, of
necessity, be the greatest sufferer, and you must submit
to see her griefs, and, it may be, to listen to
her reproaches. These will fall lightly on your
ears when you can reproach yourself with nothing.
If you did not submit to them—if you fled from the
task before you—in place of her reproaches you
would have her suspicions, and your own self rebuke
in all future time.”

He had put the matter before me in a new light,
and, with a sigh, I changed my purpose, resolving
to start for Marengo in the morning. Meanwhile,
let me relate the progress of other parties to this
narrative.