University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
LAUREL HILL.

—Texan MSS.

Laurel Hill! Did you ever see it by day-light—on
a Sabbath day, when the crowd,
who come hero to gape about the graves, are
locked out—on a Sabbath day in June, when
everything was silent, save the bees, and all
things motionless as death, save, the gentle
blossoms, trembling above the grass.

It is very beautiful then, with its white
monuments and winding walks, its high wall
and entrance gate, shutting out the hot, dusty
road; its chapel, with stained windows, where
prayer is said before the coffin is laid away,
in the dismal vault, or planted in the fresh,
smoking earth; altogether a place of perfume,
bees and flowers, graves burthened with
sculpture and marbles rich in epitaphs.

Yet I like it not. It looks to me, with its
dainty monuments burdened with flowers, like
an attempt to be elegant with Death, and
decorate his fleshless skull with the ribbons
and millinery of the fashionable world.

There is too much mockery, too much
mimicry of woe, in this elegant cemetry. Too
much of—

Give me an old graveyard, where the
graves are hidden among tall grass and wild
flowers, where the tombstones peep modestly
above the blossoms and the verdure, and a
holy air of repose, as if from God, imbues
the place where dead people sleep, and brings
sweet messages of immortality home to the
soul.

But these fashionable cemetrys, Mount Auburn,
Greenwood and Laurel Hill. Could
you not, my dear friends, keep Fashion in
your ball rooms, and leave the grave as it
was in the days of our fathers, a holy altar,
where none came to look save those who had
friends among the dead?

`Come boys, we've had our dinner and our
wine at the United States Hotel—lobster and
champaigne, and all the et ceteras—let's take
a cap and go out to Laurel Hill and have a
jovial chat as we smoke our cigars amongst
the graves!'

Does that sound very sweet? Think of a
mother, or a sister, or a wife, sleeping in the
sod, while a party of half-drunken dandies
stroll over their graves, venting their obscene
souls in jests that taint the very air. I have
even seen one of those wretched manikins,
from Chestnut street, whom the tailor makes,
stand on Laurel Hill, plying his opera glass
among the homes of death.

Laurel Hill is beautiful without all this
garniture of sculpture and millinery of fashion

—it was beautiful long ago, before they made
it a `fashionable cemetry.'

Down by the river where the trees grew
thickest, dipping their leaves in the waters,
and the bank arises, rugged with huge old
forms of rock, there is many a solemn walk
among the quiet nooks shrouded in foliage,
or over the steeps shaded by the sighing pine.
The sunlight comes in stray gleams, and
through the trees the river glimpses on the
sight. Gloomily in the shadows the dark
vaults are seen, their iron doors sunken in the
clefts of the rocks, while, overhead, a leafy
canopy waves like a pall.

It was down among these haunts of gloom
that the wanderer bent his steps at dead of
night.

No sunlight now upon the vaults, no gleam
of moon or star to light, with a solitary ray,
those paths leading to the river, those wind-winding
ways that climb the granite rocks.—
Like the spirits of the dead, the mist glides
about the rocks, and winds—so white and
cold—among the trunks of the centuried
trees.

Juan paused before an iron door, sunken
beneath a mass of rock, with a pine tree shooting
away from the sod in front of it. He
took from his breast a key, and the harsh
sound of the yielding lock echoed like a shriek
through the silence.

He advanced, and in the very air rushing
from the charnel, felt that death was there.
Closing the door he stood in the darkness of
the vault; a horrible intense darkness that
seemed to shut him in its stifling folds and
bind him like a cloak.

Silence, darkness, thought!

With a phosphorescent match he produced
a blue and vivid light which glared at once
upon the darkness, disclosing the narrow
walls of the vault and shining upon those
coffins—there are two—placed side by side on
the floor.

That blueish light burned for a moment,
glittered on the silver plate upon each coffin's
breast, and went out.

The darkness was more horrible from the
glare of that sudden, phosphorescent ray.

That ray revealed the features of Juan,
working with fearful agony, and revealed
the names inscribed upon the coffins.

These were the names, glaring for a moment
and then gone,—

`Isabel.'

`Don Antonio Marin.'

For the first time the Wanderer spoke,—

`I was in the room when John Randolph
died, and saw him trace upon a card, with his
skinny finger, a single word—`Remorse'—
and saw him die, with his eye glazing as he
gloated on it. That word I never knew what
it meant till now.'

He was silent; there was no light to show
the hideous writhing of his face.

`Isabel! Isabel! You answer me not,
for you are cold and dead—the worms upon
your brow, the shroud upon your breast—
dead. You who shone so beautiful in the
Home of Prairie Eden.

`Isabel, when you were dying you told me
that `there had been too much blood shed,'
too much even for the hideous ruin which the
betrayer worked for you. You besought me
to bring his body from the vaults of Sacrificios
and lay it by your side, to show that you
forgave him even in death. I have obeyed,
to-day Don Antonio arrived—he is here, my
sister; by your side, and I, your brother, feel
remorse for the revenge which I hurled on his
dying hour—remorse.'

Silence and thought.

`Speak to me Isabel, tell me, is there a
hope for me beyond—there, across the black
grave? Speak, is there one hope? Isabel,
here, beside your coffin, in the cold, dark
vault I kneel, and repeat your dying words,
The blessed God forgave his murderers even
on the Cross! John, there has been too
much bloodshed—too much too much. `Vengeance
is mine, and I will repay,' was spoken

by God himself, and we, John, have taken
from God his own time and manner of justice
—we have done much wrong; let us now forgive.”

`I see your dying eyes, my sister, and hear
your voice,—

“For forgiveness is such a beautiful blossom
to bloom upon our shrouds when we
are dead.”

A pause once more—sobs—tears.

“Let us forgive, and make such recompense
for our wrong as is in the power of
man to make. Be kind, very kind to Isora—
let her never know her brother's fate. Bring
hither his body and let let it be plaeed beside
mine when I am dead, in token, that
after much wrong and horrible crimes, we
sleep in death together, and sleep in forgiveness'

`These words on your lips, you fell back
and grew cold in my arms.'

A sound as of a strong heart breaking in
agony

`I kneel, Isabel; I place my hand upon his
coffin—I—I—Oh God!—I forgive him!'

Again the silence of Death upon the dark
vault.

`Behold me, Isabel! My Free Rangers,
those outcasts of the land and sea, no longer
know that their leader lives. I am alone.—
There is no living breast into whose recesses
I may pour the agony of my soul—may pour
my horrible secret and my remorse. For
Isora—oh God! she is dying—every moment
she dies before my face. I cannot tell her
that it was her brother whom she cursed in the
vaults of Sacrificios—no, no! I come to you
—speak to me—let me know whether beyond
this dark grave there is a hope, whether there
is one star in the midnight sky of death?'

And shaken from the proud might of his
vengeance, the strong man grovelled beside
the coffins, and laid his brow upon the slimy
floor of the vault.

`Remorse!'