“Sir—Bella is dead!”
I dropped into my chair. I said nothing. The housekeeper—bless her kind heart!—slipped noiselessly out. My hands were over my eyes. The winds were sighing outside, and the clock ticking mournfully within.
I did not sob, nor weep, nor utter any cry.
The clock ticked mournfully, and the winds were sighing; but I did not hear them any longer; there was a tempest raging within me that would have drowned the voice of thunder.
It broke at length in a long, deep sigh—“Oh, God!”—said I. It may have been a prayer—it was not an imprecation.
Bella—sweet Bella, was dead! It seemed as if with her half the world were dead—every bright face darkened—every sunshine blotted out—every flower withered—every hope extinguished!
I walked out into the air and stood under the trees where we had played together with poor Tray—where Tray lay buried. But it was not Tray I thought of, as I stood there, with the cold wind playing through my hair and my eyes filling with tears. How could she die? Why was she gone? Was it really true? Was Isabel indeed dead—in her coffin—buried? Then why should anybody live? What was there to live for, now that Bella was gone?
Ah, what a gap in the world is made by the death of those we love! It is no longer whole, but a poor half-world, that swings uneasy on its axis and makes you dizzy with the clatter of its wreck!
The housekeeper told me all—little by little, as I found calmness to listen. She had been dead a month; Lilly was with her through it all; she died sweetly, without pain, and without fear—what can angels fear? She had spoken often of “Cousin Paul;” she had left a little packet for him, but it was not there; she had given it into Lilly’s keeping.
Her grave, the housekeeper told me, was only a little way off from her home—beside the grave of a brother who died long years before. I went there that evening. The mound was high and fresh. The sods had not closed together, and the dry leaves caught in the crevices and gave a ragged and a terrible look to the grave. The next day I laid them all smooth—as we had once laid them on the grave of Tray; I clipped the long grass, and set a tuft of blue violets at the foot, and watered it all with—tears. The homestead, the trees, the fields, the meadows, in the windy November, looked dismally. I could not like them again—I liked nothing but the little mound that I had dressed over Bella’s grave. There she sleeps now—the sleep of death!