There is one exception; this is a mail not related to her, but who would have been had she lived. Wingate goes away with the intention ere long to return. The chapel burying-ground brinks upon the river, and when the shades of night have descended over it, he brings his boat alongside. Then, fixing her to the bank, he steps out, and proceeds in the direction of the new made grave. All this cautiously, and with circumspection, as if fearing to be seen. The darkness favouring him, he is not.
Reaching the sacred spot he kneels down, and with a knife, taken from his pockets, scoops out a little cavity in the lately laid turf. Into this he inserts a plant, which he has brought along with him—one of a common kind, but emblematic of no ordinary feeling. It is that known to country people as “The Flower of Love-lies-bleeding” (Amaranthus caudatus).
Closing the earth around its roots, and restoring the sods, he bends lower, till his lips are in contact with the grass upon the grave. One near enough might hear convulsive sobbing, accompanied by the words:—
“Mary, darling! you’re wi’ the angels now; and I know you’ll forgie me, if I’ve done ought to bring about this dreadful thing. Oh, dear, dear Mary! I’d be only too glad to be lyin’ in the grave along wi’ ye. As God’s my witness I would.”
For a time he is silent, giving way to his grief—so wild as to seem unbearable. And just for an instant he himself thinks it so, as he kneels with the knife still open in his hand, his eyes fixed upon it. A plunge with that shining blade with point to his heart, and all his misery would be over! “My mother—my poor mother—no!” These few words, with the filial thought conveyed, save him from suicide. Soon as repeating them, he shuts to his knife, rises to his feet, and returning to the boat again rows himself home—but never with so heavy a heart.
Volume Two—Chapter Five.
A French Femme de Chambre.
Of all who assisted at the ceremony of Mary Morgan’s funeral, no one seemed so impatient for its termination as the priest. In his official capacity he did all he could to hasten it; soon as it was over hurrying away from the grave, out of the burying-ground, and into his own house, near by.