The tears rolled down his cheek as he gazed upon this frightful memento.
"In this room I sat up a whole night when they laid her in the coffin, and all night as I gazed upon those loved features, placid in their eternal repose, I was constantly fancying that she breathed, and that her bosom heaved again with life. Alas! it was but the mockery of my love. She remained cold to my kiss—insensible to the tenderness which watched over her. Yet I could not leave her. It was foolish, perhaps, but it was all that remained to me. To gaze upon her was painful, yet there was pleasure in that pain. The face which had smiled such sunshine on me, which had so often looked up to mine in love, that face was now cold, lifeless—but it was hers, and I could not leave it. My poor, poor girl!"
His sobs interrupted him. Captain Heath had no disposition to check a grief which would evidently wear itself away much more rapidly by thus dwelling on the subject, than by any effort to drive it from the mind. To say the truth, Heath was himself too much moved to speak. The long, sharply-defined trace of the coffin on the coverlet was to him more terrible than the sight of the corpse could have been; it was so painfully suggestive.
"The second night," continued Vyner, "they prevailed on me to go to bed; but I could not sleep. No sooner did I drop into an uneasy doze, than some horrible dream aroused me. My waking thoughts were worse. I was continually fancying the rats would—would—ugh! At last, I got up and went into the room. Who should be there, but Violet! The dear child was in her night-dress, praying by the side of the bed! She did not move when I came in. I knelt down with her. We both offered up our feeble prayers to Him who had been pleased to take her from us. We prayed together, we wept together. We kissed gently the pale rigid face, and then the dear child suffered me to lead her away without a word. It was only then that I suspected the depth of Violet's grief. She had not cried so much as Rose and Blanche. I thought she was too young to feel the loss. But from that moment I understood the strange light which plays in her eyes when she speaks of her mother."
He stooped over the bed and kissed it; and then, quite overcome, he threw himself upon a chair, and buried his face in his hands. The ceaseless wash of the distant waves was now distinctly heard, and it gave a deeper melancholy to the scene. Captain Heath's feelings were so wound up, that the room was becoming insupportable to him, and desirous of shaking off these impressions, he endeavoured to console his friend.
"I ought to be more firm," said Vyner, rising, "but I cannot help it. I am not ashamed of these tears—
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?
But I ought not to distress others by them."
He led the way down stairs, and, as the children were out, made Heath promise to return to dinner; "it would help to make them all more cheerful."
Captain Heath departed somewhat shocked at the pedantry which in such a moment could think of Horace; and by that very pedantry he was awakened to a sense of the ludicrous figure which sorrow had made of Vyner.