“In the cold, damp earth we laid her,
When the forest cast its leaf,
And we sighed, that one so beautiful
Should have a lot so brief.”
“So, Madam, you refuse—my boy is dying, and he yearns to look once more on the poor girl who would have been his wife in a single week.”
It was but a few days after her interview with Mr. Mosier, that Malina heard these words issue from her mother’s parlor, as she was passing through the hall, from the chamber where she had just left Phebe striving to beguile her weary thoughts with a book. The door was ajar, and there was a power in the words which made her start and listen. It was a deep, manly voice, that of an aged person, but entreaty, tenderness and something almost like resentment, combined to render it startling and pathetic. Malina held her breath, and, drawing a step nearer, looked through the door.
An aged man was standing before her mother, he held a cane without resting on it, and a broad brimmed hat was in his left hand; firm and erect he stood in the quiet room, the gray hair sweeping back from his forehead, and his plain dress giving him the look of a patriarch; his face was agitated, but so full of benevolence that Malina loved the old man before she guessed who he was. Violent passions could seldom have passed over those mild features, still they were disturbed as he spoke, and the good old man was evidently struggling with strong and bitter emotions. There was something in the grasp of his hand on the cane, and in his dignified bearing, which awed the sympathy it excited.
Mrs. Gray was sitting in her easy chair, looking rather earnestly at the old man. She had been engaged in knitting when he entered, but had laid the work on a little round stand by her side, and seemed rather anxious to take it up again; but she was too punctilious for that, and very blandly requested her visitor to resume the seat from which he had risen. “No, I have not time to sit down, every minute is worth years to me now—my only son is dying, and I am absent from his side.” The old man now paused, his chin began to quiver, and turning away his face, he strove to conceal the tears that broke into his eyes from the calm and heartless woman who sat gazing upon him.
“Madam,” he said, but his voice was broken, and his hand shook till the hat fell from his grasp to the floor. “Madam, I beseech you, think better of this! My boy cannot live forty-eight hours; the doctors told me so before I left him. But I came from his bed side, when each lost moment was as a drop of blood wrung from my heart, thinking that you might refuse any messenger but his father. You are a woman and should feel for him, and here I gave up five whole hours of this precious time that he might look on the face of that poor girl before he dies; and his mother—you have had children sleeping against your heart, madam—do you think his mother would not find it a comfort if the soul of her only child could go up to heaven from her bosom where he nestled in his first infancy? Do you think she has no woman’s yearning wish for the last embrace, the last endearing word? She loves the boy better than her own soul, and he is dying before her eyes—but she gave him up. When she saw that he moaned for the presence of one who had become dearer than his own mother, she bade me come hither and bring the girl that her first born might die in the arms he loved best—think, woman, every moment I spend in talking here is wrung from the death bed of a child that was all on earth that two old people had to love and hope for. I must depart, but let her go with me.”
The old man unconsciously clasped his hands as he spoke, and tears fell like rain over his withered cheeks.