“Through lawless camp, through ocean wild,
Her prophet eye pursues her child;
Scans mournfully her poet’s strain,
Fears for her merchant, loss alike and gain.”
LYRA INNOCENTIUM.
Dr. May took the management of himself into his own hands, and paid so little attention to Mr. Ward’s recommendations that his sons and daughters were in continual dread of his choosing to do something that might cause injurious agitation.
However, he did not go further than Margaret’s bedroom where he sat hour after hour his eyes fixed upon her, as she continued in a state bordering on insensibility. He took little notice of anything else, and hardly spoke. There were heavy sighs now and then, but Richard and Flora, one or other of whom were always watching him, could hardly tell whether to ascribe them to the oppression of sorrow or of suffering. Their great fear was of his insisting on seeing his wife’s face, and it was a great relief that he never alluded to her, except once, to desire Richard to bring him her ring. Richard silently obeyed, and, without a word, he placed it on his little finger. Richard used to read the Psalms to him in the morning, before he was up, and Flora would bring little Daisy and lay her by his side.
To the last moment they dreaded his choosing to attend the funeral, and Flora had decided on remaining at home, though trembling at the thought of what there might be to go through. They tried to let him hear nothing about it, but he seemed to know everything; and when Flora came into Margaret’s room without her bonnet, he raised his head, and said, “I thought you were all going.”
“The others are—but may I not stay with you and her, papa?”
“I had rather be alone, my dears. I will take care of her. I should wish you all to be there.”
They decided that his wishes ought to be followed, and that the patients must be entrusted to old nurse. Richard told Flora, who looked very pale, that she would be glad of it afterwards, and she had his arm to lean upon.
The grave was in the cloister attached to the minster, a smooth green square of turf, marked here and there with small flat lozenges of stone, bearing the date and initials of those who lay there, and many of them recording former generations of Mays, to whom their descent from the headmaster had given a right of burial there. Dr. Hoxton, Mr. Wilmot, and the surgeon, were the only friends whom Richard had asked to be with them, but the minster was nearly full, for there was a very strong attachment and respect for Dr. and Mrs. May throughout the neighbourhood, and every one’s feelings were strongly excited.
“In the midst of life, we are in death—” There was a universal sound as of a sort of sob, that Etheldred never disconnected from those words. Yet hardly one tear was shed by the young things who stood as close as they could round the grave. Harry and Mary did indeed lock their hands together tightly, and the shoulders of the former shook as he stood, bowing down his head, but the others were still and quiet, in part from awe and bewilderment, but partly, too, from a sense that it was against her whole nature that there should be clamorous mourning for her. The calm still day seemed to tell them the same, the sun beaming softly on the gray arches and fresh grass, the sky clear and blue, and the trees that showed over the walls bright with autumn colouring, all suitable to the serenity of a life unclouded to its last moment. Some of them felt as if it were better to be there than in their saddened desolate home.
But home they must go, and, before going upstairs, as Flora and Etheldred stood a moment or two with Norman, Ethel said in a tone of resolution, and of some cheerfulness, “Well, we have to begin afresh.”