Of his lady's widowhood,and of her return to townAll that remained of my Lord Dunstanwolde was borne back to his ancestral home,and there laid to rest in the ancient tomb in which his fathers slept.Many came from town to pay him respect,and the Duke of Osmonde was,as was but fitting,among them.The countess kept her own apartments,and none but her sister,Mistress Anne,beheld her.
The night before the final ceremonies she spent sitting by her lord's coffin,and to Anne it seemed that her mood was a stranger one,than ever woman had before been ruled by.She did not weep or moan,and only once kneeled down.In her sweeping black robes she seemed more a majestic creature than she had ever been,and her beauty more that of a statue than of a mortal woman.She sent away all other watchers,keeping only her sister with her,and Anne observed in her a strange protecting gentleness when she spoke of the dead man.
"I do not know whether dead men can feel and hear,"she said.
"Sometimes there has come into my mind--and made me shudder--the thought that,though they lie so still,mayhap they know what we do--and how they are spoken of as nothings whom live men and women but wait a moment to thrust away,that their own living may go on again in its accustomed way,or perchance more merrily.If my lord knows aught,he will be grateful that I watch by him to-night in this solemn room.He was ever grateful,and moved by any tenderness of mine."'Twas as she said,the room was solemn,and this almost to awfulness.It was a huge cold chamber at best,and draped with black,and hung with hatchments;a silent gloom filled it which made it like a tomb.Tall wax-candles burned in it dimly,but adding to its solemn shadows with their faint light;and in his rich coffin the dead man lay in his shroud,his hands like carvings of yellowed ivory clasped upon his breast.
Mistress Anne dared not have entered the place alone,and was so overcome at sight of the pinched nostrils and sunk eyes that she turned cold with fear.But Clorinda seemed to feel no dread or shrinking.She went and stood beside the great funeral-draped bed of state on which the coffin lay,and thus standing,looked down with a grave,protecting pity in her face.Then she stooped and kissed the dead man long upon the brow.
"I will sit by you to-night,"she said."That which lies here will be alone to-morrow.I will not leave you this last night.Had Ibeen in your place you would not leave me."She sat down beside him and laid her strong warm hand upon his cold waxen ones,closing it over them as if she would give them heat.
Anne knelt and prayed--that all might be forgiven,that sins might be blotted out,that this kind poor soul might find love and peace in the kingdom of Heaven,and might not learn there what might make bitter the memory of his last year of rapture and love.She was so simple that she forgot that no knowledge of the past could embitter aught when a soul looked back from Paradise.
Throughout the watches of the night her sister sat and held the dead man's hand;she saw her more than once smooth his grey hair almost as a mother might have touched a sick sleeping child's;again she kissed his forehead,speaking to him gently,as if to tell him he need not fear,for she was close at hand;just once she knelt,and Anne wondered if she prayed,and in what manner,knowing that prayer was not her habit.
'Twas just before dawn she knelt so,and when she rose and stood beside him,looking down again,she drew from the folds of her robe a little package.
"Anne,"she said,as she untied the ribband that bound it,"when first I was his wife I found him one day at his desk looking at these things as they lay upon his hand.He thought at first it would offend me to find him so;but I told him that I was gentler than he thought--though not so gentle as the poor innocent girl who died in giving him his child.'Twas her picture he was gazing at,and a little ring and two locks of hair--one a brown ringlet from her head,and one--such a tiny wisp of down--from the head of her infant.I told him to keep them always and look at them often,remembering how innocent she had been,and that she had died for him.There were tears on my hand when he kissed it in thanking me.
He kept the little package in his desk,and I have brought it to him."The miniature was of a sweet-faced girl with large loving childish eyes,and cheeks that blushed like the early morning.Clorinda looked at her almost with tenderness.
"There is no marrying or giving in marriage,'tis said,"quoth she;"but were there,'tis you who were his wife--not I.I was but a lighter thing,though I bore his name and he honoured me.When you and your child greet him he will forget me--and all will be well."She held the miniature and the soft hair to his cold lips a moment,and Anne saw with wonder that her own mouth worked.She slipped the ring on his least finger,and hid the picture and the ringlets within the palms of his folded hands.
"He was a good man,"she said;"he was the first good man that I had ever known."And she held out her hand to Anne and drew her from the room with her,and two crystal tears fell upon the bosom of her black robe and slipped away like jewels.
When the funeral obsequies were over,the next of kin who was heir came to take possession of the estate which had fallen to him,and the widow retired to her father's house for seclusion from the world.The town house had been left to her by her deceased lord,but she did not wish to return to it until the period of her mourning was over and she laid aside her weeds.The income the earl had been able to bestow upon her made her a rich woman,and when she chose to appear again in the world it would be with the power to mingle with it fittingly.
