Leaning tenderly over the sleeper, his quiet, cold, set face told her he had gone to that bar of final trial where, in his Maker's infinite mercy, only He who fashions and reads human hearts and sees entirely around the circle of circumstances, can justly judge.
A low, long-drawn, quivering cry, as of some creature mortally stricken, summoned Mrs. Mitchell, who found the girl huddled over the still form, his grey head lifted to her breast.
Holding her solitary vigil that night beside him, her cheek laid on his shoulder, her hand clasping his icy, interlocked fingers, she found a solace which surprised her in the assurance that he had known the significance of her sacrifice—that he loved her better in consequence of all she had ventured and suffered in his behalf. Her supreme dread had been his discovery of the cause of her marriage, but now and then the scowling menace from which we cower, breaks in smiling, tender benediction. To love, that prompts and sustains in crucial hours of self-immolation, is occasionally added a transforming exaltation that sublimates the unworthy object for whom the sacrifice is borne; and the most pityingly merciful of all angels—Death—extinguishes life with one hand, while the other smooths scars of character, levels unlovely angles, lifts shadows of sin, and gives to memory that magic mantle whose halo never fades.
With singular and unnatural calmness, Eglah had arranged the details of the funeral service next day in her father's church. She telegraphed Father Temple to meet her in Washington en route to the North, and asked Mr. Whitfield to go with her until her cousin joined her on the train.
To lay her father to rest among his enemies in Y—— was unendurable; she would take him to the cemetery in his native State, where his parents and sisters slept, and erect a monument there in sight of his constituents who had honored and loved him.
It had grown very cold; there was no fire in the long drawing-room, where portraits of Maurices and Vivians stared imperiously down at the alien lying motionless under the great cut-glass chandelier. Silent and tearless the girl kept watch. The undertaker had mentioned the date to be inscribed on the casket plate, and she recalled her Arctic calendar. This was the solstice, the sunless midnight, the core of Polar winter. To-morrow the sun would begin to climb back to Mr. Herriott, but the sun of her life had set forever. A shudder shook her, and she nestled closer, laying her lips against her father's throat. Eliza laid heavier wraps around the stooping shoulders, placed a hot blanket under her feet, and now and then kissed the girl's bowed head, but no words, no sob, profaned the sacred silence.
When the body was carried to the chancel of the crowded church, she walked alone, followed closely by the few who best understood her isolation. Shrouded in black, she sat still and silent as her dead; and some persons present who had cause for bitterness against "reconstruction judiciary" forgot their wrongs in genuine pity for the proud and lonely mourner.
Under a fragrant pall, woven of smilax and his favorite double white violets, that covered the casket and fell to its handles, she bore him away to the stony hills of New England.