I rose from the ground, laying Ramie’s head gently on my handkerchief, and calling the coachman we lifted him up and laid him as well as we could across the seats of the carriage.
Ellerton and Brazon, who had been standing some distance off, smoking and talking carelessly, got into the other carriage, and, bowing as they passed us, drove rapidly on to the station. The doctor kindly asked, as we drove slowly on, what I intended to do.
“I don’t know,” I replied, vacantly.
“If you will allow me to suggest a plan, I would say go to our little hotel here, get a room for to-night, and telegraph immediately for a metallic case, which will, perhaps, come out on the evening train. The undertaker will seal it up for you, and you can carry it in to-morrow.”
I thanked him for his kind advice, but told him that as I knew the conductors on the road I could take the body into the mail car with me till we got to Wilmington. I lowered the carriage curtains, and ordered the driver to go as close as possible to the track at the station and wait for the train. It was a very short time before the train came in, and I immediately sought out the conductor, who had known me since I was a boy, my father being one of the directors of the road. I told him my friend DeVare had been killed in a duel, and asked permission to carry the body in the mail car. He readily accorded it, and had the carriage driven close up to the door. But with all our precaution, quite a crowd gathered around as we lifted poor Ramie from the carriage and laid him on some cushions in the car. Some one had heard me call his name to the conductor, and it passed from mouth to mouth that “a young man named DeVare was killed this morning near here in a duel, and they are carrying him home.”
The passengers in the coaches got hold of it, and I was very much annoyed by the impertinent yet natural curiosity with which one after another came to the door and looked at myself and the corpse. At last the whistle sounded, the train got under way, and I was free from interruptions. I leaned my face against a pile of mail bags, and gave way to miserable reflection. The present was too horrible to dwell on, and the future nothing but remorse and gloom. Remorse that I had not prevented the fatal affair at all hazards. Remorse that I had not conquered pride and satisfied Brazon with my own apologies and explanation; gloom that my prospects were blighted, father deceived, and angered into dislike of me, mother surprised and grieved beyond expression, and Carlotta horrified into repelling me; my career at the University, which I had resolved, after Lillian had discarded me, to make brilliant, now cut short in disgrace, and my hitherto exuberant spirits damped by an ever vivid remembrance of the terrible tragedy, in which I had taken so large a part. Then I thought of the shock I would give them at home as I drove up to the door with DeVare’s dead body, and as I fancied the faces of horror and words of reproach, I shrank from the ordeal. My bitter reflections were interrupted by a hand laid on my shoulder. I looked up and found the conductor standing by me.
“There is a lady in the rear coach wishes to speak with you,” he said, counting over some tickets he took from his pocket.
“Who is it?” I asked, looking at him vacantly.
“Don’t know her. Perhaps she’s some kin to you. She’s a fine looking old lady, a little gray, sitting two seats from the back of the coach.”