University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
VIOLET DIES.

Richard was laying out his vegetable beds one morning,
and the children were to their knees and elbows in dirt, preparing
for baking, — moulding pie-crust, stirring puddings,
cupping cakes, out of the damp earth. Looking towards
the street, he saw the Old Man, the Grandfather of the Orphans,
urgently bent upon something, as it were star-gazing,
— now lifting his face into the air, now peering across the
fields, anon putting his hand to his ear. Advancing to the
gate of Willow Croft, he entered it, and came with an excited
step towards the garden. “Did you not hear it? Did
you not see it?” said he to Richard. “My eyes and ears
are trying to cheat me out of it, because I am an old man;
but I am too old for them.” “What is it?” asked Richard.
“The hang-bird,” he replied. “I see it!” said Memmy,
whose eyes were sharp as a razor, pointing with the bit of
a shingle she was at work with; “it is there on the fence.”
“That is a robin,” answered Richard. “No,” said the Old
Man, “it is a hang-bird. I have been out every morning
after it. I know its trump. It carried off her mother, and
now it has come for her.”

Aunt Grint, who was making an early morning call on
Roxy, overhearing the conversation, appeared, exclaiming,
“Sakes alive! what is going to happen now? Death everywhere,
— death all around us, and who is ready?”

“Did you see it?” asked the Old Man.

“See it!” she recoilingly answered. “How can you see
it, when a body is frightened to death hearing it?”

“Which way?” eagerly inquired the other.

“It has n't any way. It is the most invisiblest thing that
ever was. You look right where it is, and it ain't there.”

“I heard it in the lot.”

“Pshaw!” she exclaimed, “you can't hear it in the lot;
it is in the chamber. It was there just before our Roseltha
died. I heard it last night. God have mercy on us! what
is a coming? O!”

“There it is on the tree!” said Memmy. And Bebby
knew it was there; she could see it, and she screeched
at it.

“For the love of heaven's sake!” cried Aunt Grint,
“don't be noisy such a time as this. Who knows but what
it may be one of the children?”

“It was a hangbird,” said the Old Man.

“No, it was n't,” rejoined Aunt Grint; “don't you suppose
I should know, when I sat up in bed half an hour, a
hearing it? And there the wretch kept at it on the left
wall, right over my shoulder, and none of us prepared. It
was a death-watch, as I was telling Roxy. O! the poor
children!”

“I would not talk in this way here, Aunt,” said Richard.
“Such ideas can do the children no good. It may be
you are both right. This man's granddaughter is very
sick, and I have not thought she could live long.”

They were both right. Death was near; Violet was
dying.

That afternoon there were assembled about the final bed-side
of the Orphan, Dr. Broadwell, the Denningtons, the
Lady Caroline, Richard, Miss Eyre, and one or two other
girls from the Factories. The Grandfather held the hand
of the dying one, and seemed to be counting the pulses, as
if he had precisely calculated the last one. Junia leaned

over the pillow of her sister. Respiration waxed rarer and
fainter, and all was over.

Dr. Broadwell said, “Our friend, we have every reason to
believe, has gone to her rest. She has been received by her
Saviour. She gave good evidence of reconciliation, and a
spiritual life, during the few months that I have been acquainted
with her. When our last hour shall come, may it
find us as prepared as she was.”

From every eye gushed the silent, irrepressible tear; every
bosom heaved with the tenderness of funereal anguish. The
Old Man, now that his watchings, his predictions, his little
duties were ended, and all that he had so carefully planned
was so entirely fulfilled, and there was nothing left, moaned,
and wept, and trembled; — forlorn decrepitude, bereft of
its staff, bereft of all on which its heart or its limbs could
lean! Junia supported hereself in Melicent's arms.

It is, in common language, hard parting. However joyous
or certain may be Immortality; however undesirable, in any
instance, may be the prolongation of this earthly existence;
however certified we are of the salvable condition of our
friends, — still, it is hard parting. Not the immediate prospect
of Heaven, not the presence of the Angel of Bliss, can
prevent the bitterness of emotion. We weep from sympathy,
and we weep from sorrow; and sympathy makes the
sorrow of many one. In a moment, as by electric communication,
all hearts coalesce; and Miss Eyre wept as
purely, as deeply, as Barbara.

It is hard parting: the cessation, the giving over, the
farewell, the last view; the absence, the being gone; nothing
for the eye to look upon, or the hand to feel, or the tongue
to speak to; the withdrawal of the spirit, the burial of the
body; the silence, and the lonesomeness.

It is hard parting: the room is bereft, the table is bereft;

old clothes and old utensils are bereft; the trees are stripped,
the landscape is lonely. There is a ceasing to talk, when
the thought is full; a ceasing to think, when the heart is full;
a ceasing to inquire and to communicate; a ceasing to gather
reminiscences and to revive attachments. The subject is
gradually dropped from speech, and from letters; dropped
from the countenance and the manner; it passes into an
allusion, it withdraws from the world, it cloisters itself in
the eternal sensations of the loving soul.

It is hard parting: — but it is not all parting, — there is a
going, too; there is an elevation of spirit, as well as depression
of the flesh. The parting takes us along with it. It
raises us from the limitable to the Illimitable. It gives to
Faith its province, and to Hope its destiny. Beyond this
vale of tears, our friends await us in the eternal Bloom!

It is hard parting: — but there is a remaining, too. All
does not go. There are blessed memories and sweet relics
still in our hands, still sleeping on our bosoms, still sitting
by the fireside, still coming in at the door. Beauty, Holiness,
Love, are never sick; for them is no funeral bell.
That face visits us in our reveries when we wish to be all
alone with it; an Ascended face, it shines on our despondency,
and smiles on our love; it peoples the solitude with a
sacred invisibility; it introduces us to the realm of the departed,
to converse with spirits — to commune with saints.
The medium between us and the dead is a purifying one.
It cleanses the character; we see nothing bad in what is
gone; there is no remembrance any more of sin; we are
ravished by virtues perhaps too late recognized; we adore
where we once hardly tolerated; — a departed friend is
always an image of pure crystal.

And the body, the transient tabernacle, the clayey tenement,
has its wonderful mission. It hastens to repair the

rent in our hearts, by its look of angelic peace; as, in the forest,
a prostrate tree hides its decay in a vesture of green
moss, so the body endues the pain and the waste of sickness
with an expression of health and repose.

When the last agony was over, the features of Violet
resumed their wonted composure; — beautifully on the
pale cheek lay the long, silken eye-lashes; on thin lips
flickered a smile, as it were a shadow reflected from the ascending,
beatified spirit. The Lady Caroline crossed over
the silent breast the lily hands, and smoothed on the forehead
the flaxen hair; and the well-defined eyebrows were
still that western cloud, floating between eyes that had set
forever and the azure expanse of the forehead above.

Mrs. Whichcomb, and the tray, came into the room, more
quietly than usual, not to minister to the sick, but to remove
the traces of sickness, and gather up sundry medicinal
vessels, for which there was no further use.

Richard left the room; and Landlady followed him.

“It has come to this!” said the latter. “Yes,” replied
Richard, mournfully. “You would hardly have thought
it,” she added. “I have feared it a long time,” he rejoined.
She was behind him when she said this. Reaching the
landing, he turned towards her, and saw her eye drooping
over the tray, loaded with empty bottles and sundry trifles,
the wrecks of a vain Hygiene. To that tray, as he had
nothing else in particular to look at, his own gaze gravitated.
“How much is gone!” she said, while a tear swelled in
her eye, which she tried to suppress, and her voice thickened
with emotion. “Yes,” replied Richard, touched by her
emotion. “How little comes out of the sick room!” she
went on; “but to remember how faithful you was, and you
are kept up under the heavy blow. Then there is the going
up and down stairs, seeing to everything that is wanted, and

with a weak back and so many others to look after, — if I
was n't a Christian, which I sometimes fear, I could n't have
got through it all. Who knows what death is, till it comes
into a body's house, and that a boarding-house, right amongst
so many, who all have their own feelings? They will not
use the things again, and it takes a good while to get them
back into the room, which we have to do to raw hands, and
never tell them. Then there is the Doctor's bill, and the
Undertaker's, and the grave-digging, which must be paid;
and you never know where the money is hid.” Richard
heard enough, too much for his peace of mind; and he
retorted, with reasonable severity, “How can you so harrow
the sensibilities of the living, and insult the memories
of the dead!”

“So-ho!” snapped the woman; “you would fob me off,
— you would shirk me out of my dues; when I have been
in the business thirty year, and stood between myself and
ruin six months at a time, which death always produces, and
the friends afterwards have no more hearts than a stone!
You shall pay for it; this sickness shall come out of you!”

Richard escaped into the street. He provided for the
obsequies; he took charge of the services on the burial day.
It was a scant procession, but it comprised the elements of
tenderest sorrow. In a quiet lot, in the city burial-ground,
the remains of Violet were laid.

What should become of the Old Man and Junia? They
were without resources. The expenses incident to what had
transpired more than exhausted their little store. There
was a balance against them of a few dollars, which the
generosity of the Factory Girls, and some others, removed.

They could not remain at Whichcomb's, for two reasons,
— the head of that establishment would not have them
there, and Junia had no wish to be there.

Nor was Junia inclined to resume her labors in the Factory.
The Old Man had a son-in-law in one of the neighboring
counties; thither they would go. Meanwhile they
were invited to spend a few days at Willow Croft.

But how should they reach that distant town? Munk
& St. John's stage-route led part way to it, and it occurred
to Richard, as it probably would occur to half our readers,
that a free passage would be offered them.

But there was an obstacle. Mr. St. John was a rightangled
man; he liked to see things square. He would have
the way-bill square with the passengers. He was wont to
follow the stage to the suburbs of the city, to see that the
footings squared with the seats. And he had introduced a
rule into the firm, possibly suggested by the laxity of his
associate, to have no free seats. A good rule, indeed, when
we reflect how a stage company is liable to be pestered by
mendicant applications, or imposed upon by fraudulent ones.
“If men are really poor, let the towns to which they belong,
or their friends, pay their passage. Why are we the sole
public benefactors?” So Mr. St. John argued.

Richard was compromised with Junia. He had said
there could be no doubt about the conveyance. Munk contributed
half a dollar towards the fare, and so did Winkle,
and so did Aunt Grint. As much more was needed. There
were the Denningtons and others, but Junia was already
insolvent to their kindnesses. What should Richard do?
What should Junia do? They were both in that pain in
which little things will sometimes involve pure and benevolent
minds; — Richard overleaping his means in an attempt
to do good; Junia sorely perplexed by the trouble she gave
her friends.

Deliverance came in this wise. Munk and St. John
desired to send an agent into the country to purchase grain,

and look after stables and other things incident to an important
stage-route, and Richard was deemed a suitable person
for such a trust. He wished to see the country, and was
glad to go; but stipulated, as a consideration for his services,
that his unfortunate friends should be carried likewise.

So, one morning, after collecting passengers from all the
hotels, and taking in the mails from the Post-office, with his
clean-washed, newly-painted, and highly-enameled coach,
and his team of mettlesome, pawing, bright-haired bays,
Winkle drew up at Willow Croft.