Marguerite Helmstedt was dead, and her daughter was distracted!
With matchless heroism Margaret had maintained her self-control until now; but the grief restrained for her idolized mother’s sake now broke all bounds—and raged, a wild, wild storm of sorrow. Who shall dare to approach her with words of comfort? Who, indeed, can console her? Not one of you, well-meaning friends; for you never sounded the depths of woe like hers. Not you, young lover; for in the passionate idolatry of her grief, she feels that to listen to your voice, beloved as it is, would, at this hour, be sacrilege to the presence of the dead. Not even you, holy, eloquent minister of God. Seek not to soothe her sorrow, any one of you. It were vain, and worse than vain. It was a mockery. Can you breathe the breath of life again into the cold bosom of the dead mother that lies in yonder chamber? Can you cause that stilled heart to beat? those closed eyes to open? those silent lips to speak and murmur softly, “My little Margaret, my dove?” In a word, can you raise the dead to life? If not, then go, and trouble her not with your commonplaces. Before the image of an only child, just orphaned of her mother, that merely human comforter who best comprehends her sorrow would stand the most confounded—dumb. Leave her to God. Only He who wounds can heal.
That afternoon, late as it was, Dr. Hartley set off for his home, to commence preparations for the burial; as, in accordance with Mrs. Helmstedt’s directions, she was to be laid beside her father and mother, in her ancestral resting-ground at Plover’s Point.
It was long before Margaret could be forced to leave her mother’s chamber, and then no one knew what to do with a child so lost in woe, until, at last, her old nurse, Hildreth, without venturing a single word of consolation, just lifted and bore her away from them all—bore her up to an old quiet attic, a sort of “chamber of desolation,” where she sat down and held her—still never breathing a word—only making of her own embracing arms a physical support for the fainting form, and her affectionate bosom a pillow for the weeping head. And so she held her for hours while she moaned and wept.
“Oh, mother, come back to me! I cannot bear it—I cannot! Oh, God, have mercy! Send her back to me! Thou canst do all things, dear God—send her back!” And sometimes: “Oh, mother! do you hear me? are you near me? where are you? Oh, take me with you! take me with you! I am your child, your heart’s child! I cannot live without you, I cannot! Oh, my mother, call me after you—call me, mother! Don’t you hear me—don’t you hear your child? Oh, mother, can’t you answer me—can’t you answer your child? Oh, no—you cannot—you cannot! and I am growing crazy!” And other wild words like these; to all of which old Hildreth listened without making any expostulation, uttering any rebuke, or offering any vain words of comfort. At last, when exhausted nature succumbed to a deep and trance-like sleep, old Hildreth carried her down and tenderly undressed and put her to bed, and sat watching hours while she slept.
The next morning, when Margaret opened her eyes, her grief awoke afresh. She wished to fly immediately to the side of her mother. But this was strictly forbidden. At last, partly because she had already shed such floods of tears, and partly because she made almost superhuman efforts to control herself, she restrained the outward expression of her grief, and went to Mrs. Houston and said:
“Let me see my mother. If you do not, I shall die. But if you do, I will be very quiet, I will not make a moan, nor shed a tear, nor utter a single complaint. Consider—when the coffin is once closed I shall never—never see her face or hold her hand again! Even now I can never more hear her voice or meet her eyes; but I can look upon her face, and hold her hands, and kiss her; but in a little while I cannot even do that. Consider then how precious, how priceless is every moment of a time so short; and let me go.”
Margaret spoke with so much self-control and forced calmness that her words and manner were strangely formal. And Mrs. Houston, deceived by them, consented to her wish.
And Margaret went down to the favorite parlor, where Mrs. Helmstedt was laid out. The shutters were all closed to darken the room; but the windows were up to ventilate it; and the breeze blowing through the Venetian blinds of the bay window played upon the broken harp, making a fitful moaning in strange harmony with the scene. Margaret reverently lifted the covering from the face of the dead, and pressed kiss after kiss upon the cold brow and lips. And then she took her seat by the side of her dead mother, and never left her again for a moment while she lay in that room.
The third day from that, being Saturday, the funeral took place. As it was to be a boat funeral, all the neighbors of the adjacent shores and islands sent or brought their boats. A large company assembled at the house. The religious services were performed in the parlor where the body had been first laid out.