Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Three or four persons were standing underneath, motionless, still as if they had collected there to gaze at the dark cathedral, to listen to the booming bell. "What is it?" she called out "What does it mean?"

Her voice, raised by excitement to unnatural strength and clearness, was heard distinctly. Those standing below looked up. In one of them she thought she recognised Mr. Comyng. He was standing bare-headed, his hat in his hand, and his solemn answer came up to her in the stillness of the night.

"Prince Albert's gone."

A moment of bewildering suspense, while the mind refused to admit the dreadful truth, and Caroline Cray turned sick and faint. And then the sobbing cry burst from her heart and lips--a cry that was to find its echo from thousands and thousands as the hours went on--

"Oh, the Queen! the Queen! May God help and support the Queen!"

[CHAPTER LV.]

A DESOLATE NIGHT.

Yes, he was gone. Great Britain rose on the Sunday morning to the news, for the telegraphs were at work, and the tidings were carried through the length and breadth of the land. And people did not believe it. It could not be! Why, it seemed but yesterday that he had come over in the flower of youth and promise to wed the fair young Queen! Dead! Prince Albert dead! None of you have forgotten the wide gap in the Litany that Sunday morning; the pale lips of the clergymen, compelled to make it; the quivering, breathless hearts that answered to it. But for the remembrance that God's ways are not as our ways, how many of those startled and grieved hearts would have felt tempted to question the why of the stroke, in their imperfect wisdom.

But to return to Caroline Cray, for the night was not yet over and the bell was ringing out. When the first immediate shock had passed, she quitted the window and leaned her head upon the counterpane. A solemn awe had laid hold of her, and she felt as she had never felt in all her life. Her whole soul seemed to go up in--may I dare to say?--heavenly commune. It was as if heaven had opened--had become very near. I may be mistaken, but I believe this same feeling was experienced by many in the first startling shock. This was so entirely unlike an ordinary death; even of one of our near and dear relatives. Heaven seemed no longer the far-off mysterious place she had been wont to regard it, but a home, a refuge, all near and real. It had opened and taken him in; in his early manhood; in his full usefulness; in England's need; when that wife and royal lady had learned to lean upon him; when his sons and his daughters were growing up around him, some of them at the moment in other lands, out of reach of the loving farewell of his aching heart! with his mission here--it so seemed--only half-fulfilled!--it had taken him in before his time, and gathered him to his rest. He did not seem to have gone entirely away; he was only hidden beyond reach and sight for a little while; that same refuge would open for her, Caroline, and others; a little earlier, a little later, and she and all would follow him. Heavy as the blow was in itself, incapable as she was of understanding it, it yet seemed an earnest of the overruling presence of the living God. Oh, what was the poor world in that night, with the strokes of the death-bell sounding in her ears, compared to that never-ending world above, that heritage on which he had entered!

Fatigue and emotion did their most on Mrs. Cray. In the morning she was unable to get up, and Watton wisely and kindly urged that she should not rise at all that day, but take a good rest, and go on to Miss Davenal's on the morrow. So she lay where she was, and listened to that gloomy death-bell, as it periodically gave forth its sound; and the bursts of tears, in her bodily weakness could not be suppressed, but came forth repeatedly to wet the pillow, as she thought of the widowed Queen, the fatherless children.