CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH.
A DISCONSOLATE WIDOWER.
My senses returned painfully, with a dull and blunted perception that some great calamity had overtaken me. I was in my mother's dressing-room, and Julia was holding to my nostrils some sharp essence, which had penetrated to the brain and brought back consciousness. My father was sitting by the empty grate, sobbing and weeping vehemently. The door into my mother's bedroom was closed. I knew instantly what was going on there.
I suppose no man ever fainted without being ashamed of it. Even in the agony of my awakening consciousness I felt the inevitable sting of shame at my weakness and womanishness. I pushed away Julia's hand, and raised myself. I got up on my feet and walked unsteadily and blindly toward the shut door.
"Martin," said Julia, "you must not go back there. It is all over."
I heard my father calling me in a broken voice, and I turned to him. His frame was shaken by the violence of his sobs, and he could not lift up his head from his hands. There was no effort at self-control about him. At times his cries grew loud enough to be heard all over the house.
"Oh, my son!" he said, "we shall never see any one like your poor mother again! She was the best wife any man ever had! Oh, what a loss she is to me!"
I could not speak of her just then, nor could I say a word to comfort him. She had bidden me be patient with him, but already I found the task almost beyond me. I told Julia I was going up to my own room for the rest of the night, if there were nothing for me to do. She put her arms round my neck and kissed me as if she had been my sister, telling me I could leave every thing to her. Then I went away into the solitude that had indeed begun to close around me.
When the heart of a man is solitary, there is no society for him even among a crowd of friends. All deep love and close companionship seemed stricken out of my life.
We laid her in the cemetery, in a grave where the wide-spreading branches of some beech-trees threw a pleasant shadow over it during the day. At times the moan of the sea could be heard there, when the surf rolled in strongly upon the shore of Cobo Bay. The white crest of the waves could be seen from it, tossing over the sunken reefs at sea; yet it lay in the heart of our island. She had chosen the spot for herself, not very long ago, when we had been there together. Now I went there alone.