She died, Miss Pimpernell said, with a soft sigh of contentment and a smile of seraphic happiness on her face; and, the face of the dead girl--she added sobbing--looked like the face of an angel in its purity and innocence, and with the stamp of heaven on its lifeless clay.
She is buried in the churchyard where she and I so often mused and spoke of those who had gone before--little thinking that _she_ would be so soon taken, and _I_, left desolate to mourn her loss.
Her grave is a perfect little garden.
Loving eyes watch it, loving hands tend it. A little, green, velvet- turfed mound is in the midst, planted round with all the flowers that she loved--snowdrops and violets in the early part of the year, roses and lilies in summer, little daisies always--for she used to say she liked them because others generally despised them.
I go there twice a day, morning and night. Her mother knows of my visits; but, we never meet, even there! She does not interfere with me; and _I_ have buried the feud of the past in Min"s grave. _There_ my heart finds only room for love and grief, ebbing and flowing in unison; coupled with a hope, which becomes more and more a.s.sured, now that I have received her message, that we shall yet meet again in that promised land where there is no death and no parting, only a sweet forgetfulness of the ills of life, and a remembrance of all its joy--the happy land of which my dream foretold in the early days of our love.
When I breathe the bloom of the flowers that rise from my darling"s resting-place in the early summer time, I almost experience peace! Her sainted presence _must_ be watching over me, I am convinced; and, my soul expands with a desire and a resolve, so to guard my life, that I may hereafter obtain "the crown incorruptible" that now, I know, she"s wearing!
This is in summer.
But, in winter--winter which is connected by a thousand close and closer a.s.sociations with her, I cannot so be content!--
It was at Christmas tide that I first spoke to her:--Christmas when we parted. On Christmas-eve we were to have met again:--it was Christmas when she died--
--In winter?--
_Ay de mi_!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
"DESOLATION."
As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years, In yearnings that can never be exprest By sighs, or groans or tears; Because all words, tho" cull"d with choicest art, Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat!
The Christmas bells, they are ringing; but ringing no gladness to me!
Ringing, and ringing, and ringing; a death-peal, which fain would I flee.
The feathery flakes are falling from the dull-grey, pall-like sky; falling, and falling, and falling; and, slowly they gather and lie.
The snowy-white mantle it covers, the churchyard and meadow and lea, as now by her grave I am kneeling;--yet, nothing but darkness _I_ see!
The little red robin is carving a cross on her grave with his feet; as he hops from the head-stone and carols, his requiem low and sweet.
All nature is hushed, and the stillness, of earth and of air and sky, though pierced by the song of the robin, but whispers a long "good-bye!"
Good-bye to my darling! "Tis ended; gone are the hopes of my life--O G.o.d! that our fates were blended, and finished this desolate strife!
THE END.