Chapter LXIV: All Alone with Death

Stunned almost into insensibility, Lydia had fallen across the bed as that glass left her hand. Lying there helplessly, with her eyes fixed upon the open orbs that looked so icily into hers, she besought her mistress to speak, to move, or turn those eyes once, that she might know that it was not death. But the eyes stared coldly on, the limbs stiffened, the hands turned to marble, and the awful stillness of death settled down upon the chamber.

Then Lydia arose, trembling in all her limbs, and was half way to the door, thinking to arouse the household, but a thought of the charge that had been given her flashed through her brain.

“Alone—I was to stay with her all night, and _alone_!” she thought, looking back to the bed, where those eyes seemed to plead with her. “There was a reason for that—something she wanted me to know and do. The paper—that will tell me!”

Some noble inspiration possessed this simple-hearted girl. She had made a promise, and that promise must be redeemed.

Up to this time Lydia had been timid and superstitious. Death to her was something terrible. She had none of this dread now, but was possessed of a strange, wild desire to carry that frail form off in her arms, and shield it from all question.

No mother ever curled the ringlets of her child with more gentle touch than this girl smoothed the silvery-brown locks of the dead, and laid them softly back from the brow on which some undying trouble was still locked, as genius embodies sorrow in marble. She closed those haunting eyes with a reverent pressure of the finger, beginning to cry piteously when the cold, white lids partly opened again, as if no sleep was ever to settle on that haunted spirit.

“Oh, if God would only forgive her, and let her sleep!” she moaned. “Day and night, day and night, since that man broke her heart, she has been like this—half asleep, half awake, as if she dreaded something, and took no wholesome rest. Oh, our Father, which art in Heaven, forgive her, do—do forgive her, as we forgive those who trespass against us! At least she did, oh Lord! But I can’t! It isn’t in me to forgive that man!”

Lydia fell upon her knees as she uttered this strange prayer, and tears fell like rain from her eyes.

“Give us this day our daily bread—only I couldn’t eat a crumb; it would choke me—lead us not into temptation—as she was, poor, dear, darling mistress—but deliver us from evil—especially from that awful man, Lord, for he is all evil, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.”

Lydia arose from her knees, relieved a little by her tears and this strange effort to ask help of God. She smoothed the pillow, settled the folds of the night robe, brushed down the lace over those waxen hands, and folded them lovingly over the heart that had ceased to beat forever. After this, she stole her hand under the pillow, and drew forth a thick package, which she carried to the lamp and examined, holding her very breath with awe.

The package contained two letters. One was directed to herself, the other to Russell Waldon.

Lydia turned up the lamp a little, and began to read:

“My friend—my faithful, kind girl—God only knows what a comfort you
have been to me; God only knows how I have needed that comfort. But
for you, Lydia, I should have been utterly alone, for it was my curse
that Bertha, my child, could not know of the anguish which you seemed
to understand. Lydia, I have loved you, and trusted you in everything
your tender age permitted you to understand. Had you been a little
older, my good girl, I might have yielded to this longing for some
human support, and told you all that hurries me on to the death-bed
where you will read this. I have had great sorrows, Lydia, which my
lips have never spoken of to but one person on earth. These sorrows
would have killed me in the end; but they work slowly, and drag me
through a living death so long, that suffering is threatened to those
I love. Now the end must come.

“Lydia, I have thought of this, for weeks, with terror, for I am
neither brave nor strong—only a poor, weak woman, who would gladly
live and suffer if that could be permitted. But it cannot—it cannot.
This very day I made a last effort to save myself, but it failed.
To-night I shall die. You will be with me, and discover more than any
other human being must know. In your hands I leave my memory—in your
hands I leave the peace and good name of my only child. Guard that,
and guard the sacred grief of my old father and mother. Let them weep
for me, but not with the bitterness of shame. Whatever my fate may be
hereafter, let them think of me as among the pure and happy.

“Again, Lydia, I charge you keep the manner of my death a secret from
every living soul. One other person will know it, but he hates me, and
is beyond all pain from the knowledge. Stay with me, after I have
passed into the presence of my God. Many a time, my good girl, have
you watched my sleep when it threatened you with no more harm than you
need dread from the sleep of death. Watch with me now. Your hands
shall close my eyes, and fold the garment which wraps me for the grave
around my form when this heart ceases to beat. It is lying now across
the foot of my bed, for I have thought of everything.

“Books tell me that the drops I shall take leave no time even for a
pang, but a perfume betrays their presence hours after their work is
done. Be careful about this. When the day dawns, to-morrow morning,
there must be no sign—only a poor, dead woman, lying tranquilly on her
pillow—a miserable deception to the last. I can trust you in this,
Lydia. To fail me would bring misery on all that I have loved—all that
you have loved, since the day you wandered into my presence with that
little bundle under your arms. Since then you have been a blessing to
me and mine. Be faithful now, I charge you, with my dying breath.

“Do not leave my child. She will have need of you. When she marries,
go with her; for I think then, more than ever, your faithful help will
be wanted. She will have sorrows; she will sometimes pine for the poor
mother who loved her so well. She is doomed to pine for many things
that my affection has given her. I know what a mighty thing it is to
ask one human being to give up life and strength to another; but you
are capable of this, and I ask it of you—dying, I ask it of you. Be to
my child that which a daintily reared sister never could be; let her
friends be your friends, her enemies your enemies. For her sake and
for mine, love those that she loves; guard her; if needs be, die for
her as I have.

“I am writing wildly. Who could ask this, and expect its fulfilment?
Yet I do—I do! In my soul I know that you will hold this behest
sacred. Watch over my Bertha; keep her from temptation; stand by her
faithfully.

“With this you will find a letter directed to Russell Waldon, the man
who will be my daughter’s husband. Take it from under my pillow. Tell
no one of its existence, but mail it at once. I think he is yet in
Virginia.

“Lydia, I have done. These are the last words I shall ever write. But
if I have been good to you, be faithful to my child.

“ELLEN CANFIELD.”

Lydia tried to stifle her sobs and shake the blinding tears from her eyes as she read this letter, but that writing, made woefully pathetic by the presence of the dead, filled her eyes again with trembling water, and she would drop her face on the table, where the lamp stood, disturbing the awful stillness with her sobs. Then she would lift her head and look piteously at the death-couch, asking forgiveness for the grief she could not check.

At last the letter was read and gathered into her heart of hearts. She folded it reverently, and kneeling down, laid her clasped hands upon the cold bosom of her mistress.

“All that you have asked of the poor girl who came to you from the street, when she had no friend, no home, nothing but just a little castaway, shall be done, if she has life and strength to do it. Your child shall be my mistress. I will be her slave. If she wants me, I will answer; if she is wronged, I will be revenged for her; if she has an enemy, I will be on his track; if she has a friend, I will lie down and let that friend wipe her feet on my hair. To her I will be faithful as a dog, and watchful as a cat. If one of us must sin, it shall be I; if one of us must die, it shall not be your child. Mistress—mistress—are you satisfied with me?”

No answer, nothing but solemn stillness, though the earnest, simple pathos of this speech might have wrung recognition from death itself.

When Lydia arose from her knees, her face, so common and even ugly, was transfigured.

“There, now, I have promised. If I break one word of it, mistress, come back from any place where you have gone, and look at me with your mournful eyes, and I shall die at your feet. Now let me begin.”

Setting the lamp upon the carpet, the girl went down on her hands and knees, carefully picking up every piece of glass. Then she went to the bed again, searched carefully, and found the tiny vial. With these in her hand, she stole out of the room, down-stairs, and through the front door, moving softly, and drawing the bolt with caution.

Once in the open air, she went swiftly toward the river and flung the vial and fragments of glass out into the stream. Then she hurried back to the house, stole into the death-chamber, and noiselessly opened all the windows, through which came a light wind, laden with the breath of dewy flowers, which swept through the room all night, carrying away every vestige of the poison that had for a time hung heavily about the room.

When this was accomplished, Lydia had nothing more to do but sit, in dreary silence, by one of the open windows, looking out into the night, where the clouds drifted and shadows moved over the face of the earth gloomily, as if armies of spirits were marching and counter-marching in search of a soul that was lost.

At last a soft line of gray crossed the horizon, then a gleam of pink shot over it, and a flush as of opening roses stole up the sky and shed its rich bloom upon the river.

Then Lydia arose, shut all the windows, and drew down the snowy muslin curtains, folding them gently over each sash like the wings of a white dove, after which she stole through the soft twilight, and went to each sleeping-room, knocking gently, and telling the inmates that there was death in the house.

It was a pitiful sight, that old couple, so still, so patient, moving about the house in noiseless grief, now and then meeting each other in that darkened room, and gazing down upon the poor vestige of a woman outlined there, as they had looked together upon her cradle; but oh, with what different faces!

It was not thus that Bertha Canfield took up her first great sorrow. She could not comprehend it—refused to believe that the thing told her as she came out of that sweet sleep in the morning, could be true. Why, only the night before her mother was well—a little nervous, perhaps, and depressed—but that was nothing unusual of late. Such things did not kill. She was in one of her long fainting fits. Lydia knew no better than to think it death; but how could she know?

Half-dressed, and with her hair floating wildly over her shoulders, the terrified girl rushed like a storm into the stillness of that death-chamber, but halted in the midst of it, almost as cold as the form upon the bed. The chill of a dreadful conviction struck to her heart. She threw up her arms, calling out, “Mother! mother!” and fell forward upon the floor, not insensible, but writhing there as if a bullet had passed through her.

Of all the persons in that old farm-house, Lydia was the most self-sustained. She made no attempt to soften Bertha’s despair, but hovered near her, said a few roughly kind words now and then, answered all her wild questions with steady patience over and over again, but kept the terrible secret in her heart with fidelity, though the pain and burden of it was eating there like a vulture. No one was surprised. The girl had been a most devoted servant, useful far beyond her years—an impulsive child and an ardent friend at the same time. It was natural that she should move about with heavy eyes and a step of lead, for her benefactress was gone, and her heart seemed to have been buried with her.

Toward night, Lydia stole away and posted Mrs. Canfield’s letter to Russell Waldon.