"She was quite sensible of your affection, dear father, and would grieve to hear you reproach yourself; we have all our faults of temper. Mother made every allowance for that. She knew how truly you loved her, that your heart was in the right place. How did she die?"
The old man raised his head, and looked long and fondly on the still calm face of his dead wife.
"Sleeping as you see her there, Dorothy, as sweet and peacefully as a little child. The Lord bless her. She was surely one o' his gentle lambs. She generally spoke to me when the sun rose, an' told me to call up the folk to their work. About half an hour ago, I heard her own dear voice call me three times. 'Larry, Larry, Larry! it be time for thee to wake up out o' sleep. The Lord calls upon thee to rise. The night is far spent, the morning is at hand in which thou must give to him an account of the deeds done in the flesh.' I jump up, all in a cold sweat an' cries out trembling all over with a deadly fear. 'Mary, did'st thee call?' An awful stillness filled the room. No answer came. The sun shone right upon the still pale face, an' told me all. It was a voice from heaven that spoke, the dear angel had been dead for hours."
Again his heart sank upon the coverlid, and the strong frame shook with the still stronger agony that mastered him. Dorothy thought it best to leave nature to deal with him, who is ever the best physician and comforter of the wounded heart, while she went to rouse the household, and take necessary steps to perform the last sad offices for the dead.
In a few minutes all was hurry and alarm, as the suddenly aroused inmates of the house rushed half-dressed into the chamber of death.
In vain Gilbert Rushmere tried to lead his father into another room; the heartbroken old man resisted every effort to separate him from his wife. The common-place condolences of Mrs. Rowly and her daughter were alike unheeded. It was useless to tell him that it was a merciful release from great suffering, that Mrs. Rushmere dying in her sleep had been saved the pain and agony of a separation from her family, or that she was now an angel in heaven.
The bereaved old man admitted all this; but looked upon her death, as far as he was concerned, as the greatest calamity. A loss so terrible and overwhelming, that he disdained to ask of heaven fortitude to bear it, and he drove these Job's comforters out of his room, in the frenzy of his great sorrow.
"Do not torture him," sobbed Dorothy, "with this cruel kindness. However well meant, his mind is not in a state to bear it. Leave him alone with his dead for one little hour, till nature softens his sorrow with the holy balm of tears. The shock has been so sudden that his mind is prostrated with the blow. He will recover himself when left alone with the beloved. The silent eloquence of that sweet calm face will do more to restore him to peace, than all we can say to reconcile him to his loss."
"Oh, if she had only spoken to me before she died;" groaned Rushmere. "I should not feel so bad. I could bear my misfortune like a man. If she had only said in her soft kind voice. 'God bless you, Lawrence,' it would ha' been something to think on, in the long lonesome nights afore me; but she left me without a word. How can I sleep in peace in my comfortable warm bed, knowing her to be alone in the cold earth. Oh, Mary! my love, my treasure! How can I live a' wanting thee."
After a pause of some minutes, he looked up from the dead wife to his son, who was leaning against the bed-post, his face covered with his sole remaining hand.