Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/711

 704 Helen, whose happiness in each other made them hopeful of all good, believed that her health would soon be perfectly restored. But Mrs. Wendell was not deceived; and though she did not express her fears aloud, she murmured to herself as she looked at the wan, transparent check of the young girl, the dark shadow beneath her eyes, and the light so intense, yet so strangely absent, as if not looking on the present, but gazing into the far distant future that shone in them, “She is not long for this world.” Denis, too, whenever he looked at her, could not resist the conviction that she was doomed to die, and could seldom stay long in her presence without, being obliged to fly to hide his emotion. In her mental state there seemed little change, except that she was more passive and gentle. A settled shadow, deep and quiet, seemed to have fallen on her, and she no longer appeared to struggle against its influence. She had the aspect of one who had accepted the dark fate awarded her, and over whom the agitation of doubt or fear, or hope, had no longer any power. She never smiled now, and never spoke except to answer a question; then she replied in a monosyllable and relapsed into silence.

The weather was warm, and during the day she was seldom in the house, but she was not able to walk far, and her favourite seat was on the top of a bank which formed one of the orchard boundaries, whence glimpses of the lake might be caught. One evening, coming home a little before sunset, Keefe found her there. Helen had just before been with her, to entreat her to come in, but she had refused to do so, with more energy than she I had shown for many days, and Helen thought it; better not to teaze her any more till Keefe should come home, and so left her. Though warm, it was a dull and cheerless day; the sun’s rays came dimly through the grey haze of the atmosphere; a sad stillness reigned all around; the birds that so short a time before had filled the air with music were all gone to seek another summer; the bees were silent in their hives; the beautiful butterflies, the noisy grasshoppers were dead; al mournful silence filled the place of their blithsome notes; and the scene seemed lifeless, as well as voiceless; the flowers were faded; the leaves, in brown and yellow heaps, lay under the trees; no cloud moved over the shrouded sky; no breeze stirred the heavy air; no dancing lights or shadows chased one another over the blighted earth, or stirred the dead leaves which strewed the ground. Instead of the scented summer air, there was a smell of damp earth, of mouldering wood, of decaying leaves. The autumn blight was stamped on everything—sadness, decay, and death; and in unison with the scene were the faded youth, the blighted beauty of Coral, as she sat moveless, joyless, passive, and smileless, with idly interlaced fingers and drooping head,

Keefe had almost passed her without perceiving her, and when he saw her he started at her death-like aspect. Once more a sad foreboding that the destroying angel had marked her for his own, sent a thrill of pain to his heart.

“Do I frighten you?” she asked, in a quiet voice.

“No, dear Coral; but it is late for you to be out. It is beginning to rain, too, and you will be wet; won’t you come in?”

“Not yet; I like the rain, the gentle rain; see how softly it falls; I will fancy it is my mother Nature, weeping for her dying child. ‘Happy are the dead whom the rain rains on! ”

“Dear Coral, why do you talk so?”

“Does it grieve you?” she asked, in those passionless tones from which all emotion seemed gone.

“Coral, you know it does.”

“You are sorry to think I must die.”

“Yes, it is sad to know that anything which once had sense, and feeling, and emotion,—which once felt hope, and joy, and love,—should vanish for ever, like a quenched spark, and leave nothing but senseless ashes behind. But it is not so, Coral. In that sense, nothing dies; it only changes to live again in another sphere of being. The dead leaves under our feet spring up again in grass and flowers—the night awakens into morning,—the dead earth lives again, when the spring returns, and what we call death is only the entrance to more perfect life.”

Coral had listened to him, with her eyes fixed on a beautiful and perfect rainbow, which spanned the heavens from east to west.

“Look at that rainbow,” she said; “how bright it was a minute ago, but now it is fading; it will soon be gone; its brief life will be extinguished, and who will remember that it ever existed.existed.” [sic]

“Not extinguished; only changed. The raindrops with which it was woven will be reproduced in flowers—the bright sunbeams that painted them will irradiate other forms of beauty.”

“Are you sure of that, Keefe.”

“Very sure.”

She turned her eyes on him, shining with a light like a glory in their clear depths.

“Then, Keefe, bury me at the foot of the pines, on the top of Scalp Head, and when the spring comes back I will live in the sweet almond blossoms, and the green leaves. Then come and look at my grave, and when you feel the fragrance, think of my love, and know that it is round you even then. Now let us go in.”

She rose, and attempted to move away, but she tottered, and would have fallen, if Keefe had not caught her in his arms. As he held her there tenderly, she looked up into his face, with a smile radiant with the love which had filled her evanescent life, laid her head on his breast, and so died.

The passionate and despairing grief of Denis when he learned Coral’s death was terrible to witness, and it was as lasting as it was violent. In spite of the prayers and entreaties of Keefe and Helen, he left them as soon as Coral was laid in the grave she had herself chosen, and for many years no one knew where he had gene, or what had become of him; but then Keefe learned that he had joined an expedition to the Arctic Sea, and perished there.

As for Keefe, though his after-life was bright with such happiness us falls to the lot of few mortals on earth, he never forget her whose love