Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. V

by Various

And now, what was there more to do? The bodies of Captain H—— and his little son had sunk in seventy fathom deep of water. If, in their hidden currents and movements they cast their victims aloft to the surface, all well; if not, no human hand could reach them. There was nothing to do! Two beings had ceased to exist, who, as far as regarded the consciousness and sympathies of the whole party, had never existed at all before. There had been no influence upon them in their lives, there was no blank to them in their deaths. They had witnessed a dreadful tragedy; they knew that she who had risen that morning a happy wife and mother was now widowed and childless, with a weight of woe upon her, and a life of mourning before her; but there were no forms to observe, no rites to prepare; nothing necessarily to interfere with one habit of the day, or to change one plan for the morrow. It was only a matter of feeling; a great only, it is true; but, as with every thing in life, from the merest trifle to the most momentous occurrence, the matter varied with the individual who felt. All pitied, some sympathized, but few ventured to help. Some wished themselves a hundred miles off, because they could not help her; others wished the same, because she distressed them; and the solitary back room, hidden from all view of the lake, to which the sufferer had been home, after being visited by a few well-meaning or curious women, was finally deserted by all save the kind lady we have mentioned, and a good-natured maid-servant, the drudge of the hotel, who came in occasionally to assist.

We have told the tale exactly as it occurred; the reader knows both plot and conclusion: and now there only remains to say something of the ways of human sorrow, and something, too, of the ways of human goodness.

Grief falls differently on different hearts; some must vent it, others can not. The coldest will be the most unnerved, the tenderest the most possessed; there is no rule. As for this poor lady, hers was of that sudden and extreme kind for which insensibility is at first mercifully provided; and it came to her, and yet not entirely—suspending the sufferings of the mind, but not deadening all the sensation of the body; for she shivered and shuddered with that bloodless cold which kept her pale, numb, and icy, like one in the last hours before death. A large fire was lighted, warm blankets were wrapped round her, but the cold was too deep to be reached; and the kind efforts made to restore animation were more a relief to her attendants than to her. And yet Miss Campbell stopped sometimes from the chafing of the hands, and let those blue fingers lie motionless in hers, and looked up at that wan face with an expression as if she wished that the eyes might never open again, but that death might at once restore what it had just taken. For some hours no change ensued, and then it was gradual; the hands were withdrawn from those that held them, and first laid, and then clenched together; deep sighs of returning breath and returning knowledge broke from her; the wrappers were thrown off, first feebly, and then restlessly. There were no dramatic startings, no abrupt questionings; but, as blood came back to the veins, anguish came back to the heart. All the signs of excessive mental oppression now began, a sad train as they are, one extreme leading to the other. Before, there had been the powerlessness of exertion, now, there was the powerlessness of control; before she had been benumbed by insensibility, now, she was impelled as if bereft of sense. Like one distracted with intense bodily pain, her whole frame seemed strained to endure. The gentlest of voices whispered comfort, she heard not; the kindest of arms supported her, she rested not. There was the unvarying moan, the weary pacing, the repetition of the same action, the measurement of the same distance, the body vibrating as a mere machine to the restless recurrence of the same thought.

We have said that every outer sign of woe was there—all but that which great sorrows set flowing, but the greatest dry up—she shed no tears! Tears are things for which a preparation of the heart is needful; they are granted to anxiety for the future, or lament for the past. They flow with reminiscences of our own, or with the example of others; they are sent to separations we have long dreaded, and to disappointments we can not forget; they come when our hearts are softened, or when our hearts are wearied; but, in the first amazement of unlooked-for woe, they find no place: the cup that is suddenly whelmed over lets no drop of water escape.

It was evident, however, through all the unruliness of such distress, that the sufferer was a creature of gentle and considerate nature; in the whirlpool which convulsed every faculty of her mind, the smooth surface of former habits was occasionally thrown up. Though the hand which sought to support her was cast aside with a restless, excited movement, it was sought the next instant with a momentary pressure of contrition. Though the head was turned away one instant from the whisper of consolation with a gesture of impatience, yet it was bowed the next as if in entreaty of forgiveness. Poor creature! what effort she could make to allay the storm which was rioting within her was evidently made for the sake of those around. With so much and so suddenly to bear, she still showed the habit of forbearance.

Meanwhile night had far advanced; many had been the inquiries and expressions of sympathy made at Mrs. H——'s door; but now, one by one, the parties retired each to their rooms. Few, however, rested that night as usual; however differently the terrible picture might be carried on the mind during the hours of light, it forced itself with almost equal vividness upon all in those of darkness. The father struggling to reach the child, and then throwing up his arms in agony, and that fair little head borne about unresistingly by the waves before they covered it over—these were the figures which haunted many a pillow. Or, if the recollection of that scene was lulled for a while, it was recalled again by the weary sound of those footsteps which told of a mourner who rested not. Of course, among the number and medley of characters lying under that roof, there was the usual proportion of the selfish and the careless. None, however, slept that night without confessing, in word or thought, that life and death are in the hands of the Lord; and not all, it is to be hoped, forgot the lesson. One young man, in particular, possessed of fine intellectual powers, but which unfortunately had been developed among a people who, God help them! affect to believe only what they understand, was indebted to this day and night for a great change in his opinions. His heart was kind, though his understanding was perverted; and the thought of that young, lovely, and feeble woman, on whom a load of misery had fallen which would have crushed the strongest of his own sex, roused within him the strongest sense of the insufficiency of all human aid or human strength for beings who are framed to love and yet ordained to lose. He was oppressed with compassion, miserable with sympathy, he longed with all the generosity of a manly heart to do something, to suggest something, that should help her, or satisfy himself. But what were fortitude, philosophy, strength of mind? Mockeries, nay, more, imbecilities, which he dared not mention to her, nor so much as think of in the same thought with her woe. Either he must accuse the Power who had inflicted the wound, and so deep he had not sunk, or he must acknowledge His means of cure. Impelled, therefore, by a feeling equally beyond his doubting or his proving, he did that which for years German sophistry had taught him to forbear; he gave but little, but he felt that he gave his best—he prayed for the suffering creature, and in the name of One who suffered for all, and from that hour God's grace forsook him not.

But the most characteristic sympathizer on the occasion was Sir Thomas ——, the fine old gentleman who had shouted so loudly from the balcony. He was at home in this valley, owned the whole range of hills on one side of the lake from their fertile bases to their bleak tops, took up his abode generally every summer in this hotel, and felt for the stricken woman as if she had been a guest of his own. Ever since the fatal accident he had gone about in a perfect fret of commiseration, inquiring every half-hour at her door how she was, or what she had taken. Severe bodily illness or intense mental distress had never fallen upon that bluff person and warm heart, and abstinence from food was in either case the proof of an extremity for which he had every compassion, but of which he had no knowledge. He prescribed, therefore, for the poor lady every thing that he would have relished himself, and nothing at that moment could have made him so happy as to have been allowed to send her up the choicest meal that the country could produce. Not that his benevolence was at all limited to such manifestations; if it did not deal in sentiment, it took the widest range of practice. His laborers were dispatched round the lake to watch for any traces of the late catastrophe; he himself kept up an hour later planning how he could best promote the comfort of her onward journey and of her present stay; and though the good old gentleman was now snoring loudly over the very apartment which contained the object of his sympathy, he would have laid down his life to save those that were gone, and half his fortune to solace her who was left.

Some hours had elapsed, the footsteps had ceased, there was quiet, if not rest, in the chamber of mourning; and, shortly after sunrise, a side door in the hotel opened, and she who had been as a sister to the stranger, never seen before, came slowly forth. She was worn with watching, her heart was sick with the sight and sounds of such woe, and she sought the refreshment of the outer air and the privacy of the early day. It was a dawn promising a day as beautiful as the preceding; the sun was beaming mildly through an opening toward the east, wakening the tops of the nearest hills, while all the rest of the beautiful range lay huge and colorless, nodding, as it were, to their drowsy reflections beneath, and the lake itself looked as calm and peaceful as if the winds had never swept over its waters, nor those waters over all that a wife and mother had loved. Man is such a speck on this creation of which he is lord, that had every human being now sleeping on the green sides of the hills, been lying deep among their dark feet in the lake, it would not have shown a ripple the more. Miss Campbell, meanwhile, wandered slowly on, and though apparently unmindful of the beauty of the scene, she was evidently soothed by its influence. All that dreary night long had she cried unto God in ceaseless prayer, and felt that without His help in her heart, and His word on her lips, she had been but as a strengthless babe before the sight of that anguish. But here beneath His own heavens her communings were freer; her soul seemed not so much to need Him below, as to rise to Him above; and the solemn dejection upon a very careworn, but sweet face, became less painful, but perhaps more touching. In her wanderings she had now left the hotel to her left hand, the boatman's clay cottage was just above, and below a little rough pier of stones, to an iron ring in one of which the boat was usually attached. She had stood on that self-same spot the day before and watched Captain H—— and his little son as they walked down to the pier, summoned the boatman, and launched into the cool, smooth water. She now went down herself, and stood with a feeling of awe upon the same stones they had so lately left. The shores were loose and shingly, many footsteps were there, but one particularly riveted her gaze. It was tiny in shape and light in print, and a whole succession of them went off toward the side as if following a butterfly, or attracted by a bright stone. Alas! they we're the last prints of that little foot on the shores of this world! Miss Campbell had seen the first thunderbolt of misery burst upon his mother; she had borne the sight of her as she lay stunned, and as she rose frenzied, but that tiny footprint was worse than all, and she burst into a passionate fit of tears. She felt as if it were desecration to sweep them away, as if she could have shrined them round from the winds and waves, and thoughtless tread of others; but a thought came to check her. What did it matter how the trace of his little foot, or how the memory of his short life were obliterated from this earth? There was One above who had numbered every hair of his innocent head, and in His presence she humbly hoped both father and child were now rejoicing.

She was just turning away when the sound of steps approached, and the boatman's wife came up. Her features were coarse and her frame was gaunt, as we have said, but she was no longer the termagant of the day before, nor was she ever so. But the lower classes, in the most civilized lands, are often, both in joy and grief, an enigma to those above them; if nature, rare alike in all ranks, speak not for them, they have no conventional imitation to put in her place. The feeling of intense suspense was new to her, and the violence she had assumed had been the awkwardness which, under many eyes, knew not otherwise how to express or, conceal; but she had sound Scotch sense, and a tender woman's heart, and spoke them both now truly, if not gracefully.

"Ye'll be frae the hotel, yonder?" she said; "can ye tell me how the puir leddy has rested? I was up mysel' to the house, and they tell't me they could hear her greeting!"