University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

Coldly the day dawned upon us, and with an
aspect of peculiar desolation. The inanimate
form of Helen was still clasped in my close embrace.
The old man spoke.

“We are alone, my son! We are alone.”

Oh! how true, how touching were his words.
What a change had the morning brought us—
what a change from day to night. But a few
hours ago, and I was all buoyancy—nay, in the
impetuosity of my mood,—in my eagerness to escape
from the duresse in which I was detained,
had I not calmly contemplated flight, leaving it
to a doubtful chance whether I should ever meet
with her again. Now that it was very certain
that we were separated—separated forever in
life, and O! how completely,—I could not well
comprehend how life was to be sustained! She
had become a part of my life; torn from me, I
began to realize the vague sensations of a heart

from which certain vital sources of pulsation are
suddenly withdrawn. Such a chill as remains—
such a tremulous uncertainty of sensation. But
one seldom dreams long over the dead. Death
is among the most certain of the things of life. It
is no illusion. It is a terrible reality. Its touch
palsies,—its aspect chills—its stony glare rebukes,
and mocks, and warns. Icy lips!—I pressed them
—but it was with the feeling of one who sought
for pain and mortification. Stony eyes! I gazed
in them, as one would gaze within his own allotted
sepulchre. The future as well as the past,
lay before me in the present. The unforgotten
past, the undeveloped future. Awful volume!—
my heart was too full to read it. I shrunk from
its dreary, dreamy lessons in dismay. I shrunk
into myself—into my own littleness; and, assured
of the great loss which I had just sustained, remembered
with a glow of shame, upon what
small game my previous thoughts had been set.
How mean and petty were the objects of my
eager thirst. How contracted, limited and worthless
the poor things of the finite upon which I
had set my heart. What a precious thing is the
love of a pure heart, when it is lost to us forever!

But what were my woes to his, that desolate
old father? What are the sorrows of youth, at
the worst, to those of age? Youth has so many
resources in youth itself. The soul is still active
and impetuous—the blood still ready for new
encounters, nay, desiring them; and every pulse

and emotion vibrates with a vitality which soon
provides recompense for every failure and mortification.
The heart still sends forth new tendrils
in place of those which have been lopt away, or
are withered, and it is seldom indeed that they
do not attach themselves to other objects, in the
absence of the lost, which partly, or perhaps
wholly, supply their deficiencies. But the heart
of the old man, like the aged plant, has no such
resources—puts forth no new tendrils. Rend the
branches—sunder the close clinging stems, and
the hurt penetrates to the core, and fixes there.
The worm follows and decay. The heart is
eaten out and gone, though a few fresh leaves, a
little coronal of green, may yet be seen upon its
mossy top, in sign rather of the immortal principle
of life than of the tree that lived. The saddest
sight in nature is that of age tottering to the
grave, unsupported by the dutiful arms of youth.
How sterile is such a life—lingering on after the
loss of the beloved ones—looking on their tombs,
and until it forgets its own. I thought, even at
that moment, of these things, as I thought of
Helen's father. And yet, he looked upon the inanimate
form with a strange and most unnatural
calmness. He had loved her with a love surpassing
the love of woman. He had lost her, at the
moment when such a loss was least to be feared;
—and, by what a sudden stroke! It may be he
was stunned—that, like myself, he did not realise
our privation so completely as I, at least, was yet
destined to do. But no! his eye was filled with
as much intelligence as calm. Whence did he
derive a consolation, of which I had nothing? I
have not said before that he was a religious man
—prayerful, truly devout. Such an assurance
may amuse the thoughtless. Piety in the abode
of outlaws! Prayer, religion, where the hourly
practice is crime! But, it was nevertheless true.
Bush Halsey was a weak man—it was an error
in him to continue in the Swamp, witnessing what
he had not power to prevent,—but his instincts
were just—his heart was in the right place, and
he kept his hands clean from the sins in which all
around him, but his dear child, wallowed freely.
At this hour, struggling, as he did, against his
loss, the calm upon his face was no bad sign of
that within his soul. It was the calm derived
from resignation—a calm which nothing else can
give; and, sitting beside the body of the beloved,
he at the foot, and I supporting the precious head,
with all its weight of drooping ringlets—he conversed
of death—its mystery—its sublimity—its
repose. Philosophy, in its cold and questioning
mood, would have mocked at such discourse as
that in which we dwelt. It was either beyond
or below philosophy,—for, in our belief of the
spiritual world, we were both children. But the
philosophy of the worlding will never bring to
any definite knowledge on the subject either of
death or life. Its beginning and ending recognizes
these conditions, but nothing more. The
teaching which can influence us any farther, must
be addressed to the heart—to that faith which
seems to me equally born of our instincts and
some blessed sympathetic influence which favors
our aspiration and wishes from without. I believe,
if we are earnest in the call, we may evoke
spirits now, as in those days when angels walked
among men. They walk among us now, as they
did in the days of the patriarch:—
Good spirits are beside us. Helen, Oh! Helen,
wert thou not beside us, on that day, when thy
freed spirit—violently freed—regained its first
life, but hung, hovering, on suspended wing, and
sanctified to our souls the precious hour that followed!
Else, how was it that, lonely as we
were, there was such a flood of serenity around
us! Thou wert with us, my Helen—thy spirit
was upon the scene, and in our hearts,—and the
skies smiled though we were sad,—and we both
felt, that in love we were not unremembered, and
that if God had ravished the blessed spirit from
the frail tabernacle in which it had first found its
dwelling, it had not been entirely taken from the
world of which we were a part. We still breathed
an atmosphere in which floated ever the pure
soul of the creature whom we loved.

“My son,” said the old man,—“Henry!—you
must leave this place. It is not for you a place
of safety. It is for her. It will be for me. But

you will be pursued. You must contrive your
flight this very day.”

“What mean you, Sir? Am I to go alone? Do
you not go with me,—and these precious remains—shall
they not go with us until we can
find consecrated ground?”

“All earth is consecrated ground. God has
made it all. The uses to which we put the earth
consecrates it. What place of city sepulchre is
more pure than this? The islet is very lovely to
the eye. Trees and shrubs keep it ever green.
The waters which bathe it on every side, keep it
ever pure. Birds live here and sing throughout
the year. Man does not vex the spot with his
strifes and follies. Can there be a fitter place
for the grave of my child, who was so pure and
so lovely? No, Henry—it is here that we must
make her grave.”

We searched out a spot for the purpose. The
island was generally a flat, but in the centre there
was a slight elevation, crowned by a clump of
gigantic cotton-wood trees. The shade was
equally sweet and sepulchral. There was a
copse of thick vines and shrubs which partially
enclosed it, and which we knew would be covered
in the spring with the honeysuckle, the jessamine,
and other sweet-scented flowers. Here
then we brought her. Here, with the paddles of
our canoe, we scooped out a narrow grave, and
making a bed of leaves, we wrapped her in the
thick grey close-bodied coat of her father, and

laid her down to her eternal rest. Sweet form,
so dear to me, shut in forever from my sight!
Sweet spirit, so blessing, still hovering around
my own!—my only prayers were my pangs. I
could not shovel in the earth upon her—I did not
—the old man did it all. How could I cast the
earth upon the white unprotected limbs, which,
but a few hours ago, had embraced me with a
passion so tender and so true.

We sat beside the grave for hours after, but
with little speech from either. What was spoken
related to the solemn subjects upon which the
old man had already spoken—life and death!
These are the great engrossing subjects. Strange!
how people strive to evade them. How the
shudder which follows the first thought of death,
makes them recoil from the second, as if it
were a subject which we might put by at will—
as if it were not, in fact, the only thing in life
which is inevitable. The first shudder over, the
thought of death is morally wholesome. We
should think of it daily, not only of its inevitableness,
but as of a thing, the character of which is
to be mainly influenced by our daily actions.
Could we think thus, religion were easy—it were
the next step in the simple process of bringing
back the stray sheep to the Good Shepherd.