All was instant confusion and dismay. Alfred, almost wild with terror, raised the drooping head which had slid from the pillow, supported the fair cheek against his bosom; and chafed, now the temples, now the hands, mechanically, endeavouring to obey the directions of the doctor, while his own hands trembled, till they could scarcely perform the task assigned them.
The doctor himself, too, seemed much alarmed, and somewhat taken by surprize; he tried all the means of restoring animation he could think of, but in vain. At length he began to look very serious indeed. To Alfred's frantic adjurations, half question, half entreaty, as though the doctor's words could reverse the decree of fate, he replied repeatedly, and with decision, that all was over. "There is not now," he added, "the strength to rally there had been at the time of the first attack."
A mournful silence followed: all, as with one consent, discontinued their efforts. The doctor folded his arms. The very attendants stood for a considerable time quite motionless.
Alfred was kneeling beside the couch, in the attitude he had taken, while striving to render assistance to her, who was now no more. At length the nurses, anxious in their officious zeal to perform the duties they considered their province, drew near, removed the head of Caroline from his supporting shoulder, and laid it on the centre of the pillow, then withdrew the hand he still grasped in his, and arranging the delicate fingers, placed it by her side; while the doctor approaching, raised our hero, and led him from the room, attempting, as he did so, the usual common-places of conversation: it was an event which had been expected for some time. There was so little hope of ultimate recovery, that it might be considered a happy release; for even had her life been preserved, her faculties could never have been restored.
As for our hero, he heard him not; all his thoughts, discoloured and distorted by late events, were desperate. "It was well," he inwardly ejaculated, "yes, it was well—life was misery—death a refuge—why should any one desire to live?"
The doctor, the while, led Alfred through the hall, assisted him into his (the doctor's) carriage, which stood at the door, and begged to know whither he desired to be driven. The question had to be repeated more than once before a murmur, from which something like the address was at length collected, could be drawn from Alfred.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The movement of the carriage, and the necessity of descending from it, having aroused Alfred from the first paralysing effects of his grief, he now paced his apartment rapidly, and continued to do so almost the whole of the night; too much absorbed by his miserable reflections, to be conscious of the bodily fatigue he was thus incurring. Yet it was impossible to be still! Was she indeed dead?—was the question, he again and again, asked himself. Then, with indescribable agony, he recalled the bewildered terror of those dear eyes during the single moment they had met his. How short was the period which had since elapsed; she was then in life—was it possible! could she be already gone for ever? A lingering feeling, in some sort allied to hope, though altogether irrational, still struggled with his despair. It is after waiting in vain, as it were, for a reprieve from fate, that sorrow for the dead seems gradually to reach its climax. It is not in the first hour of bereavement that we can comprehend our wretchedness; so difficult is it to believe, that in a few short moments, the great, the awful change, has taken place and eternity for a fellow-mortal, who trod the path of earth with us but now, commenced. Then would he view, with stern despair, the mysterious union, by which his own fate, the fate of poor Willoughby, and that of Caroline, seemed linked together in misery.
"But she is now at rest," he would add, and after dwelling for a time on this idea, gentler emotions would arise; and he would strain his mental vision to behold the shadowy regions of that "bourn whence no traveller returns," as though tenderness thus sought for some locality in which to picture to itself the cherished image of the being beloved.