“Mr. Fisher,” she said, in a calm, compassionate voice, “let us endure this trial with fortitude. I grieve to see you suffer. Try to be calm.”
“I can’t endoor it,” moaned the Captain. “He’s everything to us. What’ll Hannah and the children say when I tell ’em he’s gone! It’ll be the house of mournin’ foriver. Here’s the workin’s of slavery. If John H., or Joel James, was in his coffin this minute, it wouldn’t compare with this bereavement. I don’t see how you can endoor it. I can’t.”
“He is the light of life to me,” she answered, gently, “but I yield him up with joy and pride. Can I feel one pulse of grief when I think that he dies for the inalienable rights of man? Can I remember that he dies to save a fellow-creature from cruelty and wrong, and mourn? Think! He was rich, and he dies for the poor; he was strong, and he dies for the weak; he was a freeman, and he dies for the slave. Is that a death to mourn? No! My soul is glad in him—my heart covers him with glory.”
The Captain looked at her calm and radiant face with a startled visage, while a thrill ran through his veins.
“Well, that’s noble,” said he. “Yis, that’s high-minded. Don’t say another word, Mrs. Harrington. I’m done. Yis, John dies in the Lord. His father died in the Lord, an’ so he will. It’s hard to bear, but it’s for libaty.”
He turned from her, sobbing, with his head on one side, and sat down. She looked at him compassionately, and then glided away to Harrington. He lay half-reclining, with the mellow lamplight resting on his face, sculptural now with the pallor of dissolution, the eyes clear and still in their shadows, the brow lit with the dews of suffering, and a sweet, faint smile palely irradiating all. Emily, white as marble, sat by him with her hands clasping one of his, magnetically calmed by his tender words, and by the peaceful and noble passion of his dying. Motioning to her not to move, Muriel pushed a footstool near the couch, and kneeling upon it beside him, put one arm around his neck, and the other across his bosom over his shoulder, and clasping him so, gazed with adoring tenderness into his eyes.
Kneeling in silence thus, and holding his soul to hers, a few minutes passed away, and the sound of the shutting door announced the arrival of the physician. Muriel and Emily arose, and the former opened the door of the library. Presently the doctor, a courteous, elderly gentleman, with a shining bald head, entered bowing, with his hands folded together.
“My dear Mrs. Harrington,” said he, “what is this? Your husband stabbed! I am shocked to hear it.”
He did not seem at all shocked, however; but was simply kind, professional and affable, with a little approval and admiration of Muriel’s beauty visible in his manner as he looked at her.
“Yes, doctor,” she replied, calmly. “Will you look at the wound?”