Soon I saw the crowd about the station begin to move, and presently the funeral-bell swung out its solemn tones of lamentation; its measured, lingering strokes, mingled with the woful shrieking of the wind and the sighing of the pine-tree overhead, made a dirge of inexpressible force and melancholy. A weight of grief seemed to settle on my very breath: it was not real sorrow; for, though I knew it well, I had not felt yet that Frank was dead,—it was not real to me,—I could not take to my stunned perceptions the fact that he was gone. It is the protest of Nature, dimly conscious of her original eternity, against this interruption of death, that it should always be such an interruption, so incredible, so surprising, so new. No,—the anguish that oppressed me now was not the true anguish of loss, but merely the effect of these adjuncts; the pain of want, of separation, of reaching in vain after that which is gone, of vivid dreams and tearful waking,—all this lay in wait for the future, to be still renewed, still suffered and endured, till time should be no more. Let all these pangs of recollection attest it,—these involuntary bursts of longing for the eyes that are gone and the voice that is still,—these recoils of baffled feeling seeking for the one perfect sympathy forever fled,—these pleasures dimmed in their first resplendence for want of one whose joy would have been keener and sweeter to us than our own,—these bitter sorrows crying like children in pain for the heart that should have soothed and shared them! No,— there is no such dreary lie as that which prates of consoling Time! You who are gone, if in heaven you know how we mortals fare, you know that life took from you no love, no faith,—that bitterer tears fall for you to-day than ever wet your new graves,—that the gayer words and the recalled smiles are only like the flowers that grow above you, symbols of the deeper roots we strike in your past existence,—that to the true soul there is no such thing as forgetfulness, no such mercy as diminishing regret!
Slowly the long procession wound up the river,—here, black with plumed hearse and sable mourners,—there, gay with regimental band and bright uniforms,—no stately, proper funeral, ordered by custom and marshalled by propriety, but a straggling array of vehicles: here, the doctor's old chaise,—there, an open wagon, a dusty buggy, a long, open omnibus, such as the village-stable kept for pleasure-parties or for parties of mourning who wanted to go en masse.
All that knew Frank, in or about Ridgefield, and all who had sons or brothers in the army, swarmed to do him honor; and the quaint, homely array crept slowly through the valley, to the sound of tolling bell and moaning wind and the low rush of the swollen river,—the first taste of war's desolation that had fallen upon us, the first dark wave of a whelming tide!
As it passed out of sight, I heard the wheels cease, one by one, their crunch and grind on the gravelled road up the slope of the grave-yard. I knew they had reached that hill-side where the dead of Ridgefield lie calmer than its living; and presently the long-drawn notes of that hymn-tune consecrated to such occasions—old China—rose and fell in despairing cadences on my ear. If ever any music was invented for the express purpose of making mourners as distracted as any external thing can make them, it is the bitter, hopeless, unrestrained wail of this tune. There is neither peace nor resignation in it, but the very exhaustion of raving sorrow that heeds neither God nor man, but cries out, with the soulless agony of a wind-harp, its refusal to be comforted.
At length it was over, and still in that same dead calm Josephine came home to me. Mrs. Bowen was frightened, Mr. Bowen distressed. I could not think what to do, at first; but remembering how sometimes a little thing had utterly broken me down from a regained calmness after loss, some homely association, some recall of the past, I begged of Mr. Bowen to bring up from the village Frank's knapsack, which he had found in one of his men's hands,—the poor fellow having taken care of that, while he lost his own: "For the captain's wife," he said. As soon as it came, I took from it Frank's coat, and his cap and sword. My heart was in my mouth as I entered Josephine's room, and saw the fixed quiet on her face where she sat. I walked in, however, with no delay, and laid the things down on her bed, close to where she sat. She gave one startled look at them and then at me; her face relaxed from all its quiet lines; she sank on her knees by the bedside, and, burying her head in her arms, cried, and cried, and cried, so helplessly, so utterly without restraint, that I cried, too. It was impossible for me to help it. At last the tears exhausted themselves; the dreadful sobs ceased to convulse her; all drenched and tired, she lifted her face from its rest, and held out her arms to me. I took her up, and put her to bed like a child. I hung the coat and cap and sword where she could see them. I made her take a cup of broth, and before long, with her eyes fixed on the things I had hung up, she fell asleep, and slept heavily, without waking, till the next morning.
I feared almost to enter her room when I heard her stir; I had dreaded her waking,—that terrible hour that all know who have suffered, the dim awakening shadow that darkens so swiftly to black reality; but I need not have dreaded it for her. She told me afterward that in all that sleep she never lost the knowledge of her grief; she did not come into it as a surprise. Frank had seemed to be with her, distant, sad, yet consoling; she felt that he was gone, but not utterly,—that there was drear separation and loneliness, but not forever.
When I went in, she lay there awake, looking at her trophy, as she came to call it, her eyes with all their light quenched and sodden out with crying, her face pale and unalterably sad, but natural in its sweetness and mobility. She drew me down to her and kissed me.
"May I get up?" she asked; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on,—"I have been selfish, Sue; I will try to be better now; I won't run away from my battle. Oh, how glad I am he didn't run away! It is dreadful now, dreadful! Perhaps, if I had to choose if he should have run away or—or this, I should have wanted him to run,—I'm afraid I should. But I am glad now. If God wanted him, I'm glad he went from the front ranks. Oh, those poor women whose husbands ran away, and were killed, too!"
She seemed to be so comforted by that one thought! It was a strange trait in the little creature; I could not quite fathom it.
After this, she came down-stairs and went about among us, busying herself in various little ways. She never went to the grave-yard; but whenever she was a little tired, I was sure to find her sitting in her room with her eyes on that cap and coat and sword. Letters of condolence poured in, but she would not read them or answer them, and they all fell into my hands. I could not wonder; for, of all cruel conventionalities, visits and letters of condolence seem to me the most cruel. If friends can be useful in lifting off the little painful cares that throng in the house of death till its presence is banished, let them go and do their work quietly and cheerfully; but to make a call or write a note, to measure your sorrow and express theirs, seems to me on a par with pulling a wounded man's bandages off and probing his hurt, to hear him cry out and hear yourself say how bad it must be!