University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
THE MOURNERS.

“It cannot be!” cried Joseph, looking at the doctor with
an agonized face; “it is too dreadful!”

“There is no room for doubt in relation to the cause. I
suspect that her nervous system has been subjected to a
steady and severe tension, probably for years past. This
may have induced a condition, or at least a temporary
paroxysm, during which she was—you understand me—
not wholly responsible for her actions. You must have
noticed whether such a condition preceded this catastrophe.”

Lucy looked from one to the other, and back to the livid
face on the pillow, unable to ask a question, and not yet
comprehending that the end had come. Joseph arose at
the doctor's words.

“That is my guilt,” he said. “I was excited and angry,
for I had been bitterly deceived. I warned her that her
life must henceforth conform to mine: my words were
harsh and violent. I told her that we had at last ascertained
each other's true natures, and proposed a serious discussion
for the purpose of arranging our common future,
this afternoon. Can she have misunderstood my meaning?
It was not separation, not divorce: I only meant to avoid
the miserable strife of the last few weeks. Who could imagine
that this would follow?”

Even as he spoke the words Joseph remembered the

tempting fancy which had passed through his own mind,—
and the fear of Philip,—as he stood on the brink of the
rock, above the dark, sliding water. He covered his face
with his hands and sat down. What right had he to
condemn her, to pronounce her mad? Grant that she had
been blinded by her own unbalanced, excitable nature rather
than consciously false; grant that she had really loved him,
that the love survived under all her vain and masterful
ambition,—and how could he doubt it after the dying
words and looks?”—it was then easy to guess how sorely
she had been wounded, how despair should follow her fierce
excitement! Her words, “Go away! you have killed
me!” were now explained. He groaned in the bitterness of
his self-accusation. What were all the trials he had endured
to this? How light seemed the burden from which he was
now free! how gladly would he bear it, if the day's words
and deeds could be unsaid and undone!

The doctor, meanwhile, had explained the manner of
Julia's death to Lucy Henderson. She, almost overcome
with this last horror, could only agree with his conjecture,
for her own evidence confirmed it. Joseph had forborne to
mention her presence in the garden, and she saw no need of
repeating his words to her; but she described Julia's convulsive
excitement, and her refusal to admit her to her
room, half an hour before the first attack of the poison.
The case seemed entirely clear to both.

“For the present,” said the doctor, “let us say nothing
about the suicide. There is no necessity for a post-mortem
examination: the symptoms, and the presence of arsenic in
the glass, are quite sufficient to establish the cause of death.
You know what a foolish idea of disgrace is attached to
families here in the country when such a thing happens,

and Mr. Asten is not now in a state to bear much more.
At least, we must save him from painful questions until
after the funeral is over. Say as little as possible to him:
he is not in a condition to listen to reason: he believes himself
guilty of her death.”

“What shall I do?” cried Lucy: “will you not stay
until the man Dennis returns? Mr. Asten's aunt must be
fetched immediately.”

It was not a quarter of an hour before Dennis arrived,
followed by Philip and Madeline Held.

Lucy, who had already despatched Dennis, with a fresh
horse, to Magnolia, took Philip and Madeline into the
dining-room, and hurriedly communicated to them the intelligence
of Julia's death. Philip's heart gave a single
leap of joy; then he compelled himself to think of Joseph
and the exigencies of the situation.

“You cannot stay here alone,” he said. “Madeline
must keep you company. I will go up and take care
of Joseph: we must think of both the living and the
dead.”

No face could have been half so comforting in the chamber
of death as Philip's. The physician had, in the mean
time, repeated to Joseph the words he had spoken to Lucy,
and now Joseph said, pointing to Philip, “Tell him everything!”

Philip, startled as he was, at once comprehended the
situation. He begged Dr. Hartman to leave all further
arrangements to him, and to summon Mrs. Bishop, the wife
of one of Joseph's near neighbors, on his way home. Then,
taking Joseph by the arm, he said: —

“Now come with me. We will leave this room awhile
to Lucy and Madeline; but neither must you be alone.

If I am anything to you, Joseph, now is the time when
my presence should be some slight comfort. We need not
speak, but we will keep together.”

Joseph clung the closer to his friend's arm, without
speaking, and they passed out of the house. Philip led
him, mechanically, towards the garden, but as they drew
near the avenue of box-trees Joseph started back, crying
out:—

“Not there!—O, not there!”

Philip turned in silence, conducted him past the barn
into the grass-field, and mounted the hill towards the pin-oak
on its summit. From this point the house was scarcely
visible behind the fir-trees and the huge weeping-willow,
but the fair hills around seemed happy under the tender
sky, and the melting, vapory distance, seen through the
southern opening of the valley, hinted of still happier landscapes
beyond. As Joseph contemplated the scene, the long
strain upon his nerves relaxed: he leaned upon Philip's
shoulder, as they sat side by side, and wept passionately.

“If she had not died!” he murmured, at last.

Philip was hardly prepared for this exclamation, and he
did not immediately answer.

“Perhaps it is better for me to talk,” Joseph continued.
“You do not know the whole truth, Philip. You have
heard of her madness, but not of my guilt. What was it I
said when we last met? I cannot recall it now; but I
know that I feared to call my punishment unjust. Since
then I have deserved it all, and more. If I am a child,
why should I dare to handle fire? If I do not understand
life, why should I dare to set death in motion?”

He began, and related everything that had passed since
they parted on the banks of the stream. He repeated the

words that had been spoken in the house and in the garden,
and the last broken sentences that came from Julia's lips.
Philip listened with breathless surprise and attention. The
greater part of the narrative made itself clear to his mind;
his instinctive knowledge of Julia's nature enabled him to
read much further than was then possible to Joseph; but
there was a mystery connected with the suicide which he
could not fathom. Her rage he could easily understand;
her apparent submission to Joseph's request, however,—her
manifest desire to live, on overhearing the physician's fears,
—her last incomplete sentence, “I—did—not—mean—”
indicated no such fatal intention, but the reverse. Moreover,
she was too inherently selfish, even in the fiercest
paroxysm of disappointment, to take her own life, he believed.
All the evidence justified him in this view of her
nature, yet at the same time rendered her death more inexplicable.

It was no time to mention these doubts to Joseph. His
only duty was to console and encourage.

“There is no guilt in accident,” he said. “It was a crisis
which must have come, and you took the only course possible
to a man. If she felt that she was defeated, and her
mad act was the consequence, think of your fate had she felt
herself victorious!”

“It could have been no worse than it was,” Joseph
answered. “And she might have changed: I did not give
her time. I have accused my own mistaken education, but
I had no charity, no pity for hers!”

When they descended the hill Mrs. Bishop had arrived,
and the startled household was reduced to a kind of dreary
order. Dennis, who had driven with speed, brought Rachel
Miller at dusk, and Philip and Madeline then departed,

taking Lucy Henderson with them. Rachel was tearful,
but composed; she said little to her nephew, but there was
a quiet, considerate tenderness in her manner which soothed
him more than any words.

The reaction from so much fatigue and excitement almost
prostrated him. When he went to bed in his own guest-room,
feeling like a stranger in a strange house, he lay for a
long time between sleep and waking, haunted by all the
scenes and personages of his past life. His mother's face,
so faded in memory, came clear and fresh from the shadows;
a boy whom he had loved in his school-days floated with
fair, pale features just before his closed eyes; and around
and between them there was woven a web of twilights and
moonlights, and sweet sunny days, each linked to some grief
or pleasure of the buried years. It was a keen, bitter joy, a
fascinating torment, from which he could not escape. He
was caught and helplessly ensnared by the phantoms, until,
late in the night, the strong claim of nature drove them
away and left him in a dead, motionless, dreamless slumber.

Philip returned in the morning, and devoted the day not
less to the arrangements which must necessarily be made for
the funeral than to standing between Joseph and the awkward
and inquisitive sympathy of the neighbors. Joseph's continued
weariness favored Philip's exertions, while at the
same time it blunted the edge of his own feelings, and
helped him over that cold, bewildering, dismal period, during
which a corpse is lord of the mansion and controls the
life of its inmates.

Towards evening Mr. and Mrs. Blessing, who had been
summoned by telegraph, made their appearance. Clementina
did not accompany them. They were both dressed in
mourning: Mrs. Blessing was grave and rigid, Mr. Blessing

flushed and lachrymose. Philip conducted them first to
the chamber of the dead and then to Joseph.

“It is so sudden, so shocking!” Mrs. Blessing sobbed;
“and Julia always seemed so healthy! What have you
done to her, Mr. Asten, that she should be cut off in the
bloom of her youth?”

“Eliza!” exclaimed her husband, with his handkerchief to
his eyes; “do not say anything which might sound like a
reproach to our heart-broken son! There are many foes in
the citadel of life: they may be undermining our—our foundations
at this very moment!”

“No,” said Joseph; “you, her father and mother, must
hear the truth. I would give all I have in the world if I
were not obliged to tell it.”

It was, at the best, a painful task; but it was made
doubly so by exclamations, questions, intimations, which he
was forced to hear. Finally, Mrs. Blessing asked, in a tone
of alarm:—

“How many persons know of this?”

“Only the physician and three of my friends,” Joseph
answered.”

“They must be silent! It might ruin Clementina's prospects
if it were generally known. To lose one daughter and
to have the life of another blasted would be too much.”

“Eliza,” said her husband, “we must try to accept whatever
is inevitable. It seems to me that I no more recognize
Julia's usually admirable intellect in her—yes, I must steel
myself to say the word!—her suicide, than I recognized her
features just now! unless Decay's effacing fingers have already
swept the lines where beauty lingers. I warned her of the
experiment, for such I felt it to be; yet in this last trying
experience I do not complain of Joseph's disappointment,

and his temporary—I trust it is only temporary—suspicion.
We must not forget that he has lost more than we have.”

“Where is—” Joseph began, endeavoring to turn the
conversation from this point.

“Clementina? I knew you would find her absence unaccountable.
We instantly forwarded a telegram to Long
Branch; the answer said, `My grief is great, but it is quite
impossible to come.' Why impossible she did not particularize,
and we can only conjecture. When I consider her
age and lost opportunities, and the importance which a
single day, even a fortunate situation, may possess for her
at present, it seems to remove some of the sharpness of the
serpent's tooth. Neither she nor we are responsible for
Julia's rash taking off; yet it is always felt as a cloud which
lowers upon the family. There was a similar case among
the De Belsains, during the Huguenot times, but we never
mention it. For your sake silence is rigidly imposed upon
us; since the preliminary—what shall I call it?—dis-harmony
of views?—would probably become a part of the narrative.”

“Pray do not speak of that now!” Joseph groaned.

“Pardon me; I will not do so again. Our minds naturally
become discursive under the pressure of grief. It is
easier for me to talk at such times than to be silent and
think. My power of recuperation seems to be spiritual as
well as physical; it is congenital, and therefore exposes me to
misconceptions. But we can close over the great abyss of
our sorrow, and hide it from view in the depth of our natures,
without dancing on the platform which covers it.”

Philip turned away to hide a smile, and even Mrs. Blessing
exclaimed: “Really, Benjamin, you are talking heartlessly!”

“I do not mean it so,” he said, melting into tears, “but
so much has come upon me all at once! If I lose my buoyancy,
I shall go to the bottom like a foundered ship! I was
never cut out for the tragic parts of life; but there are characters
who smile on the stage and weep behind the scenes.
And, you know, the Lord loveth a cheerful giver.”

He was so touched by the last words he spoke, that he
leaned his head upon his arms and wept bitterly.

Then Mrs. Blessing, weeping also, exclaimed: “O, don't
take on so, Benjamin!”

Philip put an end to the scene, which was fast becoming
a torment to Joseph. But, later in the evening, Mr. Blessing
again sought the latter, softly apologizing for the intrusion,
but declaring that he was compelled, then and there,
to make a slight explanation.

“When you called the other evening,” he said, “I was
worn out, and not competent to grapple with such an unexpected
revelation of villany. I had been as ignorant of
Kanuck's real character as you were. All our experience
of the world is sometimes at fault; but where the Reverend
Dr. Lellifant was first deceived, my own case does not seem
so flagrant. Your early information, however, enabled me
(through third parties) to secure a partial sale of the stock
held by yourself and me,—at something of a sacrifice, it is
true; but I prefer not to dissociate myself entirely from the
enterprise. I do not pretend to be more than the merest
tyro in geology; nevertheless, as I lay awake last night,—
being, of course, unable to sleep after the shock of the telegram,
— I sought relief in random scientific fancies. It occurred
to me that since the main Chowder wells are `spouting,'
their source or reservoir must be considerably higher
than the surface. Why might not that source be found under

the hills of the Amaranth? If so, the Chowder would
be tapped at the fountain-head and the flow of Pactolean
grease would be ours! When I return to the city I shall
need instantly—after the fearful revelations of to-day—some
violently absorbing occupation; and what could be more appropriate?
If anything could give repose to Julia's unhappy
shade, it would be the knowledge that her faith in the Amaranth
was at last justified! I do not presume to awaken
your confidence: it has been too deeply shaken; all I ask is,
that I may have the charge of your shares, in order—without
calling upon you for the expenditure of another cent, you
understand—to rig a jury-mast on the wreck, and, D. V.,
float safely into port!”

“Why should I refuse to trust you with what is already
worthless?” said Joseph.

“I will admit even that, if you desire. `Exitus acta probat,'
was Washington's motto; but I don't consider that we have
yet reached the exitus! Thank you, Joseph! Your question
has hardly the air of returning confidence, but I will force
myself to consider it as such, and my labor will be to deserve
it.”

He wrung Joseph's hand, shed a few more tears, and betook
himself to his wife's chamber. “Eliza, let us be calm:
we never know our strength until it has been tried,” he
said to her, as he opened his portmanteau and took from it
the wicker-covered flask.

Then came the weariest and dreariest day of all,—when the
house must be thrown open to the world; when in one room
the corpse must be displayed for solemn stares and whispered
comments, while in another the preparation of the funeral
meats absorbs all the interest of half a dozen busy women;
when the nearest relatives of the dead sit together in a room

up-stairs, hungering only for the consolations of loneliness and
silence; when all talk under their voices, and uncomfortably
fulfil what they believe to be their solemn duty; and when
even Nature is changed to all eyes, and the mysterious gloom
of an eclipse seems to fall from the most unclouded sun.

There was a general gathering of the neighbors from far
and near. The impression seemed to be—and Philip was
ready to substantiate it—that Julia had died in consequence
of a violent convulsive spasm, which some attributed to one
cause and some to another.

The Rev. Mr. Chaffinch made his way, as by right, to the
chamber of the mourners. Rachel Miller was comforted in
seeing him, Mr. and Mrs. Blessing sadly courteous, and
Joseph strengthened himself to endure with patience what
might follow. After a few introductory words, and a long
prayer, the clergyman addressed himself to each, in turn,
with questions or remarks which indicated a fierce necessity
of resignation.

“I feel for you, brother,” he said, as he reached Joseph
and bent over his chair. “It is an inscrutable visitation,
but I trust you submit, in all obedience?”

Joseph bowed silently.

“He has many ways of searching the heart,” Mr. Chaffinch
continued. “Your one precious comfort must be that
she believed, and that she is now in glory. O, if you would
but resolve to follow in her footsteps! He shows His love,
in that He chastens you: it is a stretching out of His hand,
a visible offer of acceptance, this on one side, and the lesson
of our perishing mortality on the other! Do you not feel
your heart awfully and tenderly moved to approach Him?”

Joseph sat, with bowed head, listening to the smooth,
unctuous, dismal voice at his ear, until the tension of his

nerves became a positive physical pain. He longed to cry
aloud, to spring up and rush away; his heart was moved,
but not awfully and tenderly. It had been yearning towards
the pure Divine Light in which all confusions of the soul are
disentangled; but now some opaque foreign substance intervened,
and drove him back upon himself. How long the
torture lasted he did not know. He spake no word, and
made no further sign.

Then Philip took him and Rachel Miller down, for the
last conventional look at the stony, sunken face. He was
seated here and led there; he was dimly conscious of a
crowd, of murmurs and steadfast faces; he heard some
one whisper, “How dreadfully pale he looks!” and wondered
whether the words could possibly refer to him. Then
there was the welcome air and the sunshine, and Dennis
driving them slowly down the lane, following a gloomy
vehicle, in which something—not surely the Julia whom he
knew—was carried.

He recalled but one other such stupor of the senses:
it was during the performance of the marriage ceremony.

But the longest day wears out at last; and when night
came only Philip was beside him. The Blessings had been
sent to Oakland Station for the evening train to the city,
and Joseph's shares in the Amaranth Company were in their
portmanteau.