She withdrew, closing the doors behind her, leaving the mourners together. The Captain and Bagasse seated themselves in silence. Presently Emily and Wentworth arose from their knees, and sat on a couch, clasped in each other’s arms. An intense stillness succeeded, and the quiet light shone lonelily on the four bowed and moveless forms.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
IO TRIUMPHE.
The solemn time slowly wore away. Gradually the twilight began to glimmer through the slats of the western window. Wentworth rose noiselessly, opened the window, put back the blinds, and withdrew the curtains; then extinguishing the light, resumed his seat again beside Emily.
The glimmering twilight slowly melted into pale dawn with a deep violet sky; and the few vague noises of reawakening life began to sound in the streets of the quiet neighborhood. Soon the violet of the sky changed into the light blue of early morning, touched by the unrisen sun, and the pure pallor of the daylight, lay within the chamber, and on its bowed and silent occupants.
Day broadened, and the first fresh beams of the sunrise reddened on the tops of the chimneys. A faint stir came to them from the inner room, and the folding-doors unclosed a little, and remained slightly ajar. They all rose, and stood in silence. Looking through the aperture, they saw that the lamps were extinguished within, and that a brighter day than theirs flushed with light the silent room. Suddenly the folding-doors swung wide open, and Muriel appeared, with a face of cloudless radiance. For a moment she stood in silence, exalted, dazzling, a presence like intoxicating music; her snowy drapery falling around her in holy bacchanal folds, her amber hair rippling goldenly and low, and her features kindled with a smile like morning.
“It is over,” she said, her voice thrilling with a rapture of tenderness. “He has gone.”
They stood in silence, gazing with awe upon her pure and lovely face, and the light of her immortal joy and peace floated in upon their cold and desolate sorrow, like heavenly rays upon a winter sea. Her sacred and auroral beauty interblended with their sense of the solemn presence of the dead, and the feelings that arose within them were like the prayers and hymns of resurrection.
Standing with bowed heads, the passing perfume of her robes told them that she moved, and they silently followed her into the room where all that was mortal of the hero lay. The curtains were drawn aside, and the light of the morning, warmed by the coming gold of the sunrise, streamed tenderly upon the white and noble features. He lay reclined, the head resting upon a cushion, the hands crossed upon the bosom, the bearded face beautiful in grand and sweet serenity, with the lips and eyelids closed. So peaceful and unchanged was his countenance, save in its marble pallor, that it might have been thought he slept. But he was dead. Nerveless now the limbs so mighty in liberty’s defence; pulseless now the strong heart whose generous currents beat for man; the busy brain that had wrought with such divine ambitions for the race, was stilled; and all the godhood that had given that body its majesty and beauty, was gone from it forever.
They gazed calmly upon the deserted form. Grief had had its hour. It would but have profaned the sanctuary of that holy and grand repose. The beauteous peace of death was there, and it made them still. Silently, for a little while, they looked with mournful and chastened spirits upon the clear and lovely features, and as they turned away, Emily bent and kissed the sacred forehead.