AUGUST THIRTIETH

Were Death so unlike Sleep,
Caught this way? Death’s to fear from flame, or steel,
Or poison doubtless; but from water feel!

Robert Browning.

I met no one in the hall or on the piazza. The house was silent and deserted: one of the maids was closing the parlor windows. She did not look at me with any surprise, for she had not probably heard that I was ill.

Once in the open air I felt stronger. I took the river-path, and walked quickly, feeling freed from a nightmare: and my mind was filled with one thought. “In a few moments I shall be beside him, I shall make him look at me, he cannot help but touch my hand.” I did not think of past or future, only of the greedy, passionate present. My infatuation was at its height. I cannot imagine a passion more absorbing, more unresisted, and more dangerous. I passed quickly through the garden without even noticing the flowers that brushed against my dress.

As I reached the grove I thought for one instant of the morning that he had met me here, just where the paths intersected. At that moment I heard a step; and full of that hope, with a quick thrill, I glanced in the direction of the sound. There, not ten yards from me, coming from the opposite direction, was Richard. I felt a shock of disappointment, then fear, then anger. What right had he to dog me so? He looked at me without surprise, but as if his heart was full of bitterness and sorrow. He approached, and turned as if to walk with me.

“I want to be alone,” I said angrily, moving away from him.

“No, Pauline,” he answered with a sigh, as he turned from me, “you do not want to be alone.”

Full of shame and anger, and jarred with the shock and fear, I went on more slowly. The wood was so silent the river through the trees lay so still and leaden. If it had not been for the fire burning in my heart, I could have thought the world was dead.

There was not a sound but my own steps; should I soon meet him, would he be sitting in his old seat by the boat-house door, or would he be wandering along the dead, still river-bank? What should I say to him? O! he would speak. If he saw me he would have to speak.

I soon forgot that I had met Richard, that I had been angry; and again I had but this one thought.

The pine cones were slippery under my feet. I held by the old trees as I went down the bank, step by step. I had to turn and pass a clump of trees before I reached the boat-house door.

I was there! With a beating heart I stepped up on the threshold. There were two doors, one that opened on the path, one that opened on the river. The house was empty. I had a little sinking pang of disappointment, but I passed on to the door looking out on the river. By this door was a seat, empty, but on this lay a book and a straw hat. I could feel the hot blushes cover my face, my neck, as I caught sight of these. I stooped down, feeling guilty, and took up the book. It was a book which he had read daily to me in our lesson-hours. It had his name on the blank page, and was full of his pencil-marks. I meant to ask him to give me this book; I would rather have it than anything the world held, when I should be parted from him. When! I sat down on the seat beside the door, with the book lying in my lap, the straw hat on the bench. I longed to take it in my hands to wreathe it with the clematis that grew about the door, as I had done one foolish, happy afternoon, not three weeks ago. But with a strange inconsistency, I dared not touch it; my face grew hot with blushes as I thought of it.

How should I meet him? Now that the moment I had longed for had arrived, I wondered that I had dared to long for it. I felt that if I heard his step, I should fly and hide myself from him. The recollection of that last interview in the library which I had lived over and over, nights and days, incessantly, since then, came back with fresh force, fresh vehemence. But no step approached me, all was silent; it began to impress me strangely, and I looked about me. I don’t know at what moment it was, my eye fell upon the trace of footsteps on the bank, and then on the mark of the boat dragged along the sand; a little below the boat-house it had been pushed off into the water.

I started to my feet, and ran down to the water’s edge (at the boat-house the trees had been in the way of my seeing the river any distance).

I stood still, the water lapping faintly on the sand at my feet; it was hardly a sound. I looked out on the unruffled lead-colored river: there, about quarter of a mile from the bank, the boat was lying: empty motionless. The oars were floating a few rods from her, drifting slowly, slowly, down the stream.

The sight seemed to turn my warm blood and blushes into ice: even before I had a distinct impression of what I feared, I was benumbed. But it did not take many moments for the truth, or a dread of it, to reach my brain.

I covered my eyes with my hands, then sprang up the bank and called wildly.

My voice was like a madwoman’s, and it must have sounded far on that still air. In less than a moment Richard came hurrying with great strides down the path. I sprang to him, and caught his arm and dragged him to the water’s edge.

“Look,” I whispered pointing to the hat and book and then out to the boat. I read his face in terror. It grew slowly, deadly white.

“My God!” he said in a tone of awe. Then shaking me from him, sprang up the bank, and his voice was something fearful as he shouted, as he ran, for help.

There were men laboring, two or three fields off. I don’t know how long it took them to get to him, nor how long to get a boat out on the water, nor what boat it was. I know they had ropes and poles, and that they were talking in eager, hurried voices, as they passed me.

I sat on the steps that led down the bank, clinging to the low railing with my hands: I had sunk down because my strength had given way all at once, and I felt as if everything were rocking and surging under me. Sometimes everything was black before me, and then again I could see plainly the wide expanse of the river, the wide expanse of the gray sky, and between them the empty, motionless boat, and the floating oars beyond upon the tide.

The voices of the men, and the splashing of the water, when at last they were launched and pulling away from shore, made a ringing, frightful noise in my head. I watched till I saw them reach the boat till I saw one of them get over in it. Then while they groped about with ropes and poles, and lashed their boats together, and leaned over and gazed down into the water, I watched in a strange, benumbed state.

But, by-and-by, there were some exclamations a stir, and effort of strength. I saw them pulling in the ropes with combined movement. I saw them leaning over the side of the boat, nearest the shore, and together trying to lift something heavy over into it. I saw the water dripping as they raised it and then I think I must have swooned. For I knew nothing further till I heard Richard’s voice, and, raising my head, saw him leaping from the boat upon the bank. The other boat was further out, and was approaching slowly. I stood up as he came to me, and held by the railing.

“I want you to go up to the house,” he said, gently, “there can be no good in your staying here.”

“I will stay,” I cried, everything coming back to me. “I will will see him.”

“There is no hope, Pauline,” he said, in a quick voice, for the boat was very near the bank, “or very little and you must not stay. Everything shall be done that can be done. I will do all. But you must not stay.”

“I will,” I said, frantically, trying to burst past him. He caught my arms and turned me toward the boat-house, and led me through it, out into the path that went up to the grove.

“Go home,” he said, in a voice I never shall forget. “You shall not make a spectacle for these men. I have promised you I will do all. Mind you obey me strictly, and go up to your room and wait there till I come.”

I don’t know how I got there. I believe Bettina found me at the entrance to the garden, and helped me to the house, and put me on my bed.

An hour passed perhaps more and such an hour! (for I was not for a moment unconscious, after this, only deadly faint and weak), and then Richard came. The door was a little open, and he pushed it back and came in, and stood beside the bed.

I suppose the sight of me, so broken and spoiled by suffering, overcame him, for he stooped down suddenly, and kissed me, and then did not speak for a moment.

At last he said, in a voice not quite steady, “I didn’t mean to be hard on you, Pauline. But you know I had to do it.”

“And there isn’t any any ” I gasped for the words, and could hardly speak.

“No, none, Pauline,” he said, keeping my hand in his. “The doctors have just gone away. It was all no use.”

“Tell me about it,” I whispered.

“About what?” he said, looking troubled.

“About how it happened.”

“Nobody can tell,” he answered, averting his face. “We can only conjecture about some things. Don’t try to think about it. Try to rest.”

“How does he look?” I whispered, clinging to his hand.

“Just the same as ever; more quiet, perhaps,” he answered, looking troubled.

I gave a sort of gasp, but did not cry. I think he was frightened, for he said, uneasily, “Let me call Bettina; she can give you something she can sit beside you.”

I shook my head, and said, faintly, “Don’t let her come.”

“I have sent for Sophie,” he said, soothingly. “She will soon be here, and will know what to do for you.”

“Keep her out of this room,” I cried, half raising myself, and then falling back from sudden faintness. “Don’t let her come near me,” I panted, after a moment, “nor any of them, but, most of all, Sophie; remember don’t let her even look at me;” and with moaning, I turned my face down on the pillow. I had taken in about a thousandth fraction of my great calamity by that time. Every moment was giving to me some additional possession of it.

Some one at that instant called Richard, in that subdued tone that people use about a house in which there is one dead.

“I have got to go,” he said, uneasily. I still kept hold of his hand. “But I will come back before very long; and I will tell Bettina to bring a chair and sit outside your door, and not let any one come in.”

“That will do,” I said, letting go his hand, “only I don’t want my door shut tight.”

I felt as if the separation were not so entire, so tremendous, while I could hear what was going on below, and know that no door was shut between us no door! Bettina, in a moment more, had taken up her station in the passage-way outside.

I heard people coming and going quietly through the hall below. I heard doors softly shut and opened.

I knew, by some intuition, that he was lying in the library. They moved furniture with a smothered sound; and when I heard two or three men sent off on messages by Richard, even the horses’ hoofs seemed to be muffled as they struck the ground. This was the effect of the coming in of death into busy, household life. I had never been under the roof with it before.

About dusk a servant came to the door, with a tray of tea and something to eat, that Mr. Richard had sent her with.

“No,” I said, “don’t leave it here.”

But, in a few moments, Richard himself brought it back. I can well imagine how anxious and unhappy he felt. He had, perhaps, never before had charge of any one ill or in trouble, and this was a strange experience.

“You must eat something, Pauline,” he said. “I want you to. Sit up, and take this tea.”

I was not inclined to dispute his will, but raised my head, and drank the tea, and ate a few mouthfuls of the biscuit. But that made me too ill, and I put the plate away from me.

“I am very sorry,” I said, meekly, “but I can’t eat it. I feel as if it choked me.”

He seemed touched with my submissiveness, and, giving Bettina the tray, stood looking down at me as if he did not know how to say something that was in his mind. Suddenly my ear, always quick, now exaggeratedly so, caught sound of carriage-wheels. I started up and cried, “They are coming,” and hid my face in my hands.

“Don’t be troubled,” he said, “you shall not be disturbed.”

“Oh, Richard,” I exclaimed, as he was going away, after another undecided movement as if to speak, “you know what I want.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, in a low voice.

“And now they’re come, I cannot. They will see him, and I cannot.”

“Be patient. I will arrange for you to go. Don’t, don’t, Pauline.”

For I was in a sort of spasm, though no tears came, and my sobs were more like the gasps of a person being suffocated, than like one in grief.

“If you will only be quiet, I will take you down, after a few hours, when they are all gone to their rooms. Pauline, you’ll kill me; don’t do so Pauline, they’ll hear you. Try not to do so; that’s right lie down and try to quiet yourself, poor child. I can’t bear to go away; but there is Sophie on the stairs.”

He had scarcely time to reach the hall before Sophie burst upon him with almost a shriek.

“What is this horrible affair, Richard? What a terrible disgrace and scandal! we never shall get over it. Will it get in the papers, do you think? I am so ill I have been in such a state since the news came. Such a drive home as this has been! Oh, Richard, tell me all about it quickly. Where is Pauline? how does she bear it?” making for my door.

Richard put out his hand and stopped her. I had sprung up from the bed, and stood, trembling violently, at the further extremity of the room. I do not know what I meant to do if she came in, for I was almost beside myself at that moment.

She was persistent, angry, agitated. How well I knew the curiosity that made her so intent to gain admission to me. It was not so much that I dreaded being a spectacle, as the horror and hatred I felt at being approached by her coldness and hypocrisy, while I was so sore and wounded. I was hardly responsible; I don’t think I could have borne the touch of her hand.

But Richard saved me, and sent her away angry. I crept back to the bed, and lay down on it again. I heard the others whispering as they passed through the hall. Mary Leighton was crying; Charlotte was silent. I don’t think I heard her voice at all.

After a long while I heard them go down, and go into the dining-room. They spoke in very subdued tones, and there was only the slightest movement of china and silver, to indicate that a meal was going on. But this seemed to give me a more frantic sense of change than anything else. I flung myself across the bed, and another of those dreadful, tearless spasms seized me. Everything all life was going on just the same; even in this very house they were eating and drinking as they ate and drank before the very people who had talked with him this day; the very table at which he had sat this morning. Oh! they were so heartless and selfish: every one was; life itself was. I did not know where to turn for comfort. I had a feeling of dreading every one, of shrinking away from every one.

“Oh!” I said to myself, “if Richard is with them at the table, I never want to see him again.”

But Richard was not with them. In a moment or two he came to the door, only to ask me if I wanted anything, and to say he would come back by-and-by.

There was a question which I longed so frantically to ask him, but which I dared not; my life seemed to hang on the answer. When were they going to take him away? I had heard something about trains and carriages, and I had a wild dread that it was soon to be.

I went to the door and called Richard back, and made him understand what I wanted to know. He looked troubled, and said in a low tone,

“At four o’clock we go from here to meet the earliest train. I have telegraphed his friends, and have had an answer. I am going down myself, and it is all arranged in the best way, I think. Go and lie down now, Pauline; I will come and take you down soon as the house is quiet.”

Richard went away unconscious of the stab his news had given me. I had not counted on anything so sudden as this parting. While he was in the house, while I was again to look upon his face, the end had not come; there was a sort of hope, though only a hope of suffering, something to look forward to, before black monotony began its endless day.