The sun went down, and Malina arose from the grave, shivering from head to foot. She gazed around, and was turning her eyes with a wistful look on her late resting place, as if she meditated casting herself down again, when a low neigh from the horse which still remained by the fence, aroused her, and leaving the shawl behind, she hurried toward the patient animal, and mounting him, rode away.
Malina must have wandered from the usual road, in the strange abstraction of her mind, for it was midnight when she came opposite the old meeting-house. Prompted, doubtless, by some vague fear of returning home, or perhaps allured to pause by the open gate, the weary and half bewildered girl turned her horse, and riding close to the front door of the parsonage house, dismounted, and allowed him to wander amid the flower beds and rose bushes which filled the yard. Thrusting her hand beneath the door sill, she took out a key, and fitted it to the lock, but with difficulty, for her hands trembled; and though hot flushes every moment darted through her frame, she was shivering with cold. She went up stairs, holding feebly by the balusters, and guided by the moonlight, which fell from a window overhead, she entered a room—that which she had decorated as the bridal chamber of her sister Phebe, and of the departed. A clear moonlight came through the windows, and lay like flags of silver amid the black shadows which filled the apartment. Every thing was still and motionless; not a breath stirred the bridal ribands with which the muslin curtains were looped back. The bed lay with the moonlight sleeping amid its pillows, like a snow drift, when the air is calm; and the atmosphere was impregnated by the dead flowers which had been profusely lavished on the toilet, and now hung crisp and withered in their vases. Malina was very ill, and a fever burned through her veins—her limbs were almost powerless, and her forehead seemed girdled with iron. Still was she sensible of surrounding things, and her heart swelled with the recollections which thronged on her aching brain. She unfastened her damp dress, and with difficulty crept into bed.
“Poor, poor Phebe,” she murmured, gathering the white counterpane over her shivering form, “how little she thinks I am here—how she would pity me, so ill, and all alone. Alas, how sad a thing this trouble is—I have not thought of Phebe these many long days—I wonder if she is ill as I am—if her head is so hot, and her limbs chilled, till they shake so. This is a cold bed—very, very cold—but his is colder still. Oh, my God! he is dead—and I have seen his grave. I—but it was not me—no—he loved my sister. But I had his dying kiss! It was the last throb of his heart that beat against mine, and chilled me so. That was it—that was it!”
With such fragments of speech, and moans of pain, Malina verged into the delirium of a raging fever. At times she would weep, and call for her sister, in tones of yearning tenderness—then notes of music would break from her lips, and ring through every corner of the solitary house, as if a prisoned angel were pleading for release there. When the fever came on, fierce and strong, she began to ask for water—to weep, and wring her hands, while she entreated some visionary being to leave her in the grave-yard where he was; where showers were continually falling and weaving rainbows around those who thirsted for rest or drink; and so her voice of suffering rose and swelled through the lone building all night. When the day dawned, she was still awake and delirious; tears stood on her crimson cheeks, and entreaties for water still rose to her parched lips.
It came at last—she knew not how it was, but a pale, sweet face bent over her, a soft voice was speaking comfort, and a glass of water cooler and more refreshing than she had ever tasted before was held to her lips. She was just conscious enough to think that it was Phebe who ministered to her wants, or some good seraph that looked as sweetly sad and kind. Then she sunk to sleep, and it was many weeks before she awoke from the dream that followed.
It was Phebe Gray who stood by the sick bed of the sufferer. A villager had seen Mrs. Gray’s horse that morning, bridled and with his saddle on, trampling among the flower beds and feasting upon the choice rose bushes which grew in the parsonage yard—he went in to secure the animal and was terrified by the voice of suffering which issued from the house. He went up stairs, saw the delirious young creature who occupied the bridal chamber, and hastened to inform Mrs. Gray—but Phebe had struggled with her own sufferings and stood over Malina’s sick bed many hours before the mother had arranged her dress and prepared herself to pass through the village with that degree of propriety which she considered due to her character.
Malina lay many weeks before the fever left her; then a cough set in and a hectic spot settled and burned into her thin cheeks. The poor girl smiled a sad quiet smile, when she heard them say each evening, that a little over exertion had excited her, that she had taken a slight cold which in the turn of her disease was felt more than usual. Still the cough deepened, the crimson spot burned on, and she knew that the life which kindled would soon be exhausted. And so it was, that autumn when the woods were all flushed with those dyes which an early frost brings to the foliage, when the nuts were ripe and the brown leaves fell in showers over the crisp moss, Malina Gray was extended beneath the snowy drapery which her own hands had gathered above the bridal bed. White ribands were still knotted amid the folds which seemed brooding over her like a cloud, and a few crimson fall flowers lay scattered upon the pillow, some of them so close to the marble cheek that a faint tinge was coldly reflected there. For two whole nights Phebe watched the beautiful clay reposing in the dim light upon her own bridal bed, but scarcely more changed than her own sweet self. Malina was the happiest, her heart had broken amid the struggle of its suffering, but that of the watcher lay crushed and withering in her young bosom. She felt that life was yet strong within her; but hope, love, every thing that makes life pleasant to a woman, had departed. She was still good, still pure almost as an angel, but the sad smile which settled on her lips never deepened to a laugh again, and no human being ever saw a tear in her changeless and sorrowful eyes.
They laid Malina Gray down to sleep beside old minister Brown—in the very spot she had yearned to repose in. A large circle of neighbors gathered around the grave, some in tears, and all very sorrowful. Mrs. Gray stood by the coffin; her mourning was arranged with great care, and a veil of new crape, deeply hemmed, fell decorously over her face, and the white handkerchief, with which she concealed those maternal tears proper for a mother, whose duty it was to be resigned under any dispensation. But Phebe stood silent and motionless; no handkerchief was lifted to her eyes, and the face which gleamed beneath the crape veil, was profoundly calm, almost as that of the corpse.
We had a new minister, on trial, of Mrs. Gray’s choosing, who performed the funeral service, and when all was over, returned home with the mourners; when they knelt in the little parlor that night, he prayed earnestly, and with genuine tears, for the bereaved mother; he besought the Lord to visit, with consolation, one who was a mother in Israel, a bright and shining ornament in the Christian church; a woman who had brought up her children in the fear and admonition of the Lord; whose path was growing brighter and brighter to the perfect day when she would reap a rich reward in heaven.
Amid a few natural sobs which awoke in the widow’s heart, she murmured, “Amen,” satisfied that her life had been one of perfect rectitude, and that in all things she had been a pattern mother, and an ornament to the church, which ought to be her consolation under any bereavement.