“Take me out,” cried Helen, struggling to be released from her father’s arms. “Oh! take me from here. It don’t seem mother that I see.”
“Hush—hush,” said Mr. Gleason, sternly, “you disturb her last moments.” But Helen, whose feelings were wrought up to a pitch which made stillness impossible, and restraint agonizing, darted from between her father’s knees and rushed into the passage. But how dim and lonely it was! How melancholy the cat looked, waiting near the door, with its calm, green eyes turned towards the chamber where its gentle mistress lay! It rubbed its white, silky sides against Helen, purring solemnly and musically, but Helen recollected many a frightful tale of cats, related by Miss Thusa, and recoiled from the contact. She longed to escape from herself, to escape from a world so dark and gloomy. Her mother was going, and why should she stay behind? Going! yet lying so still and almost breathless there! She had been told that the angels came down and carried away the souls of the good, but she looked in vain for the track of their silvery wings. One streak of golden ruddiness severed the gray of twilight, but it resembled more a fiery bar, closing the gates of heaven, than a radiant opening to the spirit-land. While she stood pale and trembling, with her hand on the latch of the door, afraid to stay where she was, afraid to return and confront the mystery of death, the gate opened, and Arthur Hazleton came up the steps. He had been there a short time before, and went away for something which it was thought might possibly administer relief. He held out his hand, and Helen clung to it as if it had the power of salvation. He read what was passing in the mind of the child, and pitied her. He did not try to reason with her at that moment, for he saw it would be in vain, but drawing her kindly towards him, he told her he was sorry for her. His words, like “flaky snow in the day of the sun,” melted as they fell and sunk into her heart, and she began to weep. He knew that her mother could not live long, and wishing to withdraw her from a scene which might give a shock from which her nerves would long vibrate, he committed her to the care of a neighbor, who took her to her own home. Mrs. Gleason died at midnight, while Helen lay in a deep sleep, unconscious of the deeper slumbers that wrapped the dead.
And now a terrible trial awaited her. She had never looked on the face of death, and she shrunk from the thought with a dread which no language can express. When her father, sad and silent, with knit brow and quivering lip, led her to the chamber where her mother lay, she resisted his guidance, and declared she would never, never go in there. It would have been well to have yielded to her wild pleadings, her tears and cries. It would have been well to have waited till reason was stronger and more capable of grappling with terror, before forcing her to read the first awful lesson of mortality. But Mr. Gleason thought it his duty to require of her this act of filial reverence, an act he would have deemed it sacrilegious to omit. He was astonished, grieved, angry at her resistance, and in his excitement he used some harsh and bitter words.
Finding persuasions and threats in vain, he summoned Miss Thusa, telling her he gave into her charge an unnatural, rebellious child, with whose strange temper he was then too weak to contend. It was a pity he summoned such an assistant, for Miss Thusa thought it impious as well as unnatural, and she had bound herself too by a sacred promise, that she would not suffer Helen to fear in death the mother whom in life she had so dearly loved. Helen, when she looked into those still, commanding eyes, felt that her doom was sealed, and that she need struggle no more. In despair, rather than submission, she yielded, if it can be called yielding, to suffer herself to be dragged into a room, which she never entered afterwards without dread.
The first glance at the interior of the chamber, struck a chill through her heart. It was so still, so chill, so dim, yet so white. The curtains of white muslin fell in long, slumberous folds down to the floor, their fringes resting lifelessly on the carpet. The tables and chairs were all covered with white linen, and something shrouded in white was stretched out on a table in the centre of the room. The sheet which covered it flapped a moment as the door opened, and then hung motionless. The outline of a human form beneath was visible, and when Miss Thusa lifted her in her arms and carried her to the spot, Helen was conscious of an awful curiosity growing up within her that was stronger than her terrors. Her breath came quick and short, a film came over her eyes, and cold drops of sweat stood upon her forehead, yet she would not now have left the room without penetrating into the mystery of death. Miss Thusa laid her hand upon the sheet and turned it back from the pale and ghastly face, on whose brow the mysterious signet of everlasting rest was set. Still, immovable, solemn, placid—it lay beneath the gaze, with shrouded eye, and cheek like concave marble, and hueless, waxen lips. What depth, what grandeur, what duration in that repose! What inexpressible sadness, yet what sublime tranquillity! Helen held her breath, bending slowly, lower and lower, as if drawn down by a mighty, irresistible power, till her cheek almost touched the clay-cold cheek over which she leaned. Then Miss Thusa folded back the sheet still farther, and exposed the shrouded form, which she had so carefully prepared for its last dread espousals. The fragrance of white roses and geranium leaves profusely scattered over the body, mingled with the cold odor of mortality, and filled the room with a deadly, sickening perfume. White roses were placed in the still, white, emaciated hands, and lay all wilted on the unbreathing bosom.
All at once a revulsion took place in the breast of Helen. It mocked her—that silent, rigid, moveless form. She felt so cold, so deadly cold in its presence, it seemed as if all the warmth of life went out within her. She began to realize the desolation, the loneliness of the future. The cry of orphanage came wailing up from the depths of her heart, and bursting from her lips in a loud piercing shriek, she sprang forward and fell perfectly insensible on the bosom of the dead.
“I wish I had not forced her to go in,” exclaimed the father, as he hung with remorseful anguish over the child. “Great Heaven! must I lose all I hold dear at once?”
“No, no,” cried Miss Thusa, making use of the most powerful restoratives as she spoke, “it will not hurt her. She is coming to already. It’s a lesson she must learn, and the sooner the better. She’s got to be hardened—and if we don’t begin to do it the Lord Almighty will. I remember the saying of an old lady, and she was a powerful wise woman, that they who refused to look at a corpse, would see their own every night in the glass.”
“Repeat not such shocking sayings before the child,” cried Mr. Gleason. “I fear she has heard too many already.”
Ah, yes! she had heard too many. The warning came too late.