The bolt had shot into its place, ere he could say more.
All the accompaniments of the last agony, of which Ida had ever heard, read or conceived, were realized in this struggle;—the blackening features, drenched with sweat, the starting eye, the twitching muscles, the death-rattle,—the soul was tearing through the clay receptacle: yet for two hours the awful conflict was protracted.
Morning! a sheet covered the rigid, motionless limbs and countenance, telling in death, of suffering; and there were solemn stoppings and stifled whispers through the house; and crape waved from the door, where the traitorous friend had waited, at night, for the dead man's wife.
Mrs. Read was borne to her chamber in hysteric convulsions, and continued raving and swooning all day—attacking, in tigress fury, every one who approached her, excepting Ida. Her she would not suffer to quit her sight. Holding her hands in a frantic grasp, she poured forth such tales as made her heart ache: of warm Spring evenings, when the air was laden with sweet-briar scent, and the young moon was swimming in the pale blue sky, and the star of love shone upon them—an eye of light—from the blushing west, and he sung to her—poetry ascending from his heart as perfume from the flowers—songs, upon whose memory she lived, in the winter of his absence. "But"—and the deep wells of her eyes were black with anguish, "her heart died, and dissolution came not to the body—would that it had! and the thought of the past was a yawning abyss, like the abode of the lost, from which arose hot, poisonous simooms and tormenting spirits. The world brought incense and gaudy offerings, and friends their best treasures, but it closed not—and she resolved, by self-immolation, to shut the chasm; by an irrevocable sacrifice, to seal it forever. The effort was idle—she sold soul and body for nought. He came, and turned her face to the Future. His heart had wavered, but returned to its allegiance. She was his, by an earlier, holier tie than her loathed tyrant's;—away in the sunny land of their youthful dreams, they would live, unmolested by memory or care. She clung to duty, until her husband drove her from him with a curse; to a brother's love,—and he painted that brother's hatred of him, and threatened to see her no more;—and by the specious names of "soul-dictates," and the "religion which enjoins truth, and condemns hypocrisy," gained her promise. The hand of the Almighty interfered!
Ida shut up her tears, and reasoned and plead with her; praying inwardly for her comfort, and that her own mind and nerves might not fail her. She rested the maniac's head upon her breast—bathed the beating temples, and pressed her cool lips to the parched ones, working with pain—beseeching her, with every endearing epithet, to rest and forget. But the lava crust was heaving; and the long-repressed flood spread over it in fast, soothing streams. The June twilight was on the earth—as she had described those of years agone; and in calming tones, she bade Ida "sing."
"What shall I sing?"
"Of love and faith and hope."
The exhausted girl rallied her strength, and the sweetest of written hymns seemed whispered to her spirit.
"'Oh! Thou, who driest the mourner's tear,
How dark this world would be,
If pierced by sins and sorrows here,
We could not fly to Thee!
'The friends, who in our sunshine live.
When winter comes, are flown;
And he, who has but tears to give,
Must weep those tears alone.