CHAPTER III.THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL.
There was a great crowd out to attend the funeral of Abelard Lyle, and, long before the hour appointed for the services, Mrs. Fordham’s cottage was filled to overflowing, as were also the yard and street in front, and it was with some difficulty the Schuyler family could make their way through the dense mass of people.
They came late, and little Godfrey had a knot of crape upon his arm, while Mrs. Schuyler wore a black silk, with no shade of color to relieve her sallow face, and she looked, with her high-bred city air, very much out of place, and very much bored, too, as if she wished it well over, and wondered why her husband should take so much trouble for a poor young man, and an entire stranger. And yet Lady Emily was not without kindly feelings, and she felt very grateful to Abelard Lyle, and very sorry that he should have lost his life in saving that of her son; and, at her husband’s suggestion, she had been to the cottage the day before to see that everything was right, andhad spoken civilly to Mrs. Fordham, and asked for some more roses, saying:
“I have had some once to-day. I was driving by just before the terrible accident, and saw such a lovely young girl,—your daughter, I suppose?”
“Yes, my daughter,” Mrs. Fordham replied, a new hope rising within her that through the Schuylers Heloise might make her way to distinction.
Heloise had a headache, she said, else she would like so much for Mrs. Schuyler to see her, and she thanked her for speaking so kindly of her, and hoped she would call again when the funeral was over.
To all this Lady Emily pretended to listen and nod assent, and, when she had all the roses she cared for, she said good-morning, and went back to the hotel, where she recounted the particulars of her call to the English maid, with whom she was on very familiar terms.
“Such assurance,” she said, “as that woman has! Why, she talked to me as if I were her equal, and even asked me to call again. She wanted me to see her daughter,—that beautiful young girl whom we saw in our drive this morning. Did I tell you that is where they have taken the young man? I should not be surprised if he were the lover of the girl, only she looked so very young. It seems to me I must have seen her before.”
The appearance of Colonel Schuyler brought to an end the lady’s conversation with Janette, and turning to her husband, she asked where they were intending to bury the young man.
“In our own family lot,” was the reply; and then Lady Emily dropped the flowers she was arranging, and her eyes opened wider than their wont, and fixed themselves upon her husband with a look of incredulity as she said: “Why, Howard, you must be crazy! Surely there are places enough without putting him there.”
“Yes, I know; but, Emily, consider for a moment,—he saved our boy’s life, and I feel like paying him every possible respect, and have ordered his grave to be made just under thepine tree at the far side of the lot. There is room enough between for all the Schuylers who will ever be buried there.”
Lady Emily knew from experience that when her husband’s mind was made up, it was useless to argue with him, so she said no more, but thought within herself that when her time came to die, she would request that her aristocratic flesh be laid in Greenwood beside the Rossiters, and not on Schuyler Hill, in that little yard where a few gray, time-worn stones marked the last resting-place of such of the Schuylers as were buried there, and where Abelard Lyle was to be taken. Colonel Schuyler was in one sense as proud as his wife, but with his pride he had much good sense and genuine kindness of heart. But for Abelard Lyle he would have lost his bright-faced boy, and he felt truly grateful to the young man, and resolved to show him every possible respect. So he ordered the funeral himself, and sent to the cottage a handsome rosewood coffin, and was in and out several times to see that all was right, and when the hour for the services arrived, drove down with his wife and son, and enacted the part of chief, and, indeed, only mourner, for Abelard had no relatives, and Mrs. Fordham was too much afraid of being identified with “that class of people” to admit of any great manifestation of feeling on her part. For the sake of the mother country, and because he had been kind to her on the ship, she had allowed the body to be brought to her house, but she managed to impress every one with the great distance there was between herself and the dead man, who looked so calm and peaceful, and handsome in his elegant coffin, with a half-opened rose upon his breast. Mrs. Fordham had put it there at Heloise’s request; but Heloise herself had taken no part in anything, or even seen the body. She had abandoned the idea of going to the grave and startling the people with her story, as she had meant to do the previous day. The pain in her head was too great to admit of her sitting up, and during the entire day she never once appeared below, but lay on the bed in her chamber, with her aching head buried in the pillow, and the faded, blood-stained rose hidden away in her bosom. She heard the people as they assembled in thehouse and yard below, and knew when the Schuylers came by the suppressed hush among the crowd. She heard, too, the clergyman’s voice as he read the burial service, and when they carried the body out she arose from her bed and through the half-closed shutters watched the funeral procession as it moved up the road, to the top of Schuyler Hill, where the open grave was waiting for all that was mortal of Abelard Lyle. Heloise could not pray then, her heart was so hard and rebellious, and ached so with a sense of actual pain, and loss, and a horrid fear of what might be in the future; and once when this fear got the mastery of her she arose, and going to her private drawer, where she kept her hidden treasures, took from it a box, in which she sought for and found, as she supposed, the instrument which was to help her in the hour of need, when she told the world what she must ere long tell. With trembling fingers she unfolded the paper and felt herself grow cold and faint, when she saw that instead of the article which was to prove her innocent and pure, she held only a receipt for goods bought and paid for by her mother in New York. Search as she might, she could not find the document she sought. That was gone, how or where she could not guess until she remembered having burned some waste papers accumulating in her drawer, only a few days before. She had it then and read it over, and supposed she laid it back in the box where she always kept it, but she must have put in its place the receipt which was folded and looked much like it, and burned the only evidence she had that she was not the wicked thing she felt herself to be as she sank upon the floor and wished that she could die. It was terrible to see such grief in one so young, for Heloise, though well grown and tall, was little more than fifteen, and her face when in repose was the face of a child. But it seemed old now, and gray, and pinched with that look of anguish upon it, mingled with something akin to shame, as she crouched upon the floor and whispered to herself:
“What if mother and the world do not believe me?” Then swift as thought the answer came: “I’ll drown myself in the river;” and sitting upright upon the floor, the young girl wentthrough in fancy with all the sickening details which such a catastrophe would involve. The anxiety of the mother, the alarm, the search for her body, the finding it at last, and the coroner’s inquest, where possibly her secret would be discovered and she be disgraced all the same.
“No, no,” she moaned, “better live and fight it out, knowing I am innocent, than carry a sullied name to a suicide’s grave.”
“And lose your soul,” something whispered in her ear, making her start with a new horror as she remembered the hereafter she had in her madness almost forgotten.
Falling upon her knees, she sobbed, “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.”
That was all she could say, but Jesus knew what she meant,—knew that she wanted help, and He helped her as He always does when asked aright, and her heart ceased to throb so painfully, and the hard look left her face, and the tears came to her relief as she said:
“I know I am innocent, and so does God; and I’ll tell mother the truth, keeping nothing back.”
Heloise had risen now, and with trembling hands was binding up her beautiful hair of golden brown, which Abelard had admired so much, and which she, too, knew was wonderful for its brightness and luxuriance. Would she ever care for it again? she asked herself, as she put it away under a net where not even a single curl could find its way to neck or brow, when suddenly, as if it had been a vision, she saw an elegant room which seemed to be at Schuyler Hill, and in that room a lady of marvellous beauty, with a face like her own, save that it was older and more mature,—a lady, clad in satin and lace, with jewels in her flowing hair and on her snowy neck, and to herself she said:
“That’s I. How came I there?”
Then the mist, if mist it was, which had for a moment clouded her mind, lifted, and she was herself again,—Heloise Fordham, standing in her own humble room and making herself ready for the meeting with her mother, and the confession she meant to make before she slept again.
I was at the funeral and saw Abelard in his coffin, and thought how dreadful it was to die so far from home and have no tears shed for me, for there were none shed for him. Everybody looked sorry, and sober, and shocked, Colonel Schuyler particularly so, and Lady Emily put her fine cambric handkerchief to her eyes when the rector spoke of the noble deed which never could be forgotten by those for whom it was done; but she did not cry, I know, for I was watching her, and I wanted to shake little Godfrey, who, though he was very subdued and quiet, actually nodded in his high chair before the remarks were over.
It was a sad funeral and a big funeral, but one void of genuine heartache, save as one young heart upstairs was breaking, and of this I did not then know.
Although more than two years the junior of Heloise, I perhaps knew her better than any one else. Intimate friends she had not, but between her and myself an acquaintance had sprung up, born of our common love for flowers and rambles by the river side. We had exchanged slips of roses and geraniums, and talked over the gate of our flower-beds, and once, when caught in a rain-storm, she had taken tea with us and delighted us all with her pretty, ladylike manners and soft, gentle speech. I was charmed with her, and having, as I believed, a secret of hers in my possession, I felt greatly interested in her, and when at the funeral I missed her and heard of the sick headache which was keeping her upstairs, I had my own private opinion with regard to the cause of that headache, and with all the curiosity of a girl of thirteen, determined upon seeing her and judging for myself how a girl looked who had lost her lover. Accordingly I lingered after the funeral, and when the people were gone and I had taken several turns in the garden I ventured up the stairs to her room and knocked softly at her door.
“Come in,” was spoken in a frightened tone, and I went in and found her standing in the middle of the room, her hands pressed to her head and her eyes fixed upon the door with an expression of alarm.
At sight of me, however, they changed at once, and with a smile she said:
“Oh, it’s you. I thought it was mother.”
“No, she hasn’t had time to come back yet,” I replied; and then, touched by the look of her white face, I burst out: “Oh, Heloise, isn’t it terrible, and he so young and handsome? I am so sorry for you.”
“Hush-sh,” she said, in a tone of alarm. “Why are you sorry for me? Why should any one be more sorry for me than for another?”
She was gazing fixedly at me, and, impelled by something I could not or did not try to resist, I replied:
“Because,—because I guess he was your beau.”
Heloise’s eyes were almost black now in her excitement, and her voice was husky as she said:
“You guess he was my beau! Why do you guess so? What business have you to guess so? Tell me, child.”
She seemed many years my senior then, and in obedience to her question I answered:
“I’ve seen him look at you just as brother Tom looks at Samantha Blackmer, and he’s her beau; and then I saw him kiss you once down by the river, that time I came upon you suddenly, you remember; but I never told. He was your beau, wasn’t he?”
She did not answer for a moment but her lips moved as if she were trying to speak, and at last she said:
“No, he was not my beau, Ettie (that was my pet name twenty years ago, before I was the village schoolmistress)—Ettie, I believe you like me, and I want—I want—you—to,—oh, Ettie, if ever people say bad things of me don’t you believe them, but stand by me, won’t you?”
She had both my hands in hers, and was looking straight into my eyes with an expression which half-frightened me out of my wits, as I told her I would stand by her, without, however, knowing at all what she meant. I was a little proud to be thus appealed to, and when the fixed expression of her face gave way and the tears began to roll down her cheeks, I criedtoo from sympathy and tried to comfort her and made her lie down upon her bed, and when she was more quiet sat by her until I heard her mother’s step below. Then I took my leave, for I was afraid of Mrs. Fordham, whom I met on the stairs, and whose face I fancied looked brighter and more cheerful than faces usually do when returning from a grave.