The Buccaneer - A Tale

Sir Robert was moving towards the door, when her hand motioned him back.

"Promise--promise that you will never force her to wed that

man!--more--that you yourself will break the contract!"

"Truly, and solemnly do I swear, that I will never force her to

fulfil--nay, that I will never even urge her to its fulfilment."

The dying lady looked unsatisfied, and some unpronounced words agitated

her lips, as Constance entered unbidden, but most welcome. She knelt by

her mother's side, and took the hand so feebly but affectionately

extended towards her. The fearful change that had occurred during her

short absence was but too visible. The breath that touched her cheek was

cold as the morning mist. The sufferer would have folded her hands in

prayer, but the strength had departed before the spirit was gone.

Constance, seeing that the fine expression of life with which her

upturned eyes had glittered was gradually passing away, clasped her

mother's hands within her own: suddenly they struggled for freedom, and

as her eye followed the pointing of her parent's finger, she saw the

lamp's last beam flicker for a moment, and then expire!--Her mother,

too, was dead!

* * * * *

It is ill to break upon the solitude of the dying, though it is good to

enter into the solemn temple of death; it is a sad but a useful lesson

to lift the pall; to raise the coffin-lid; to gaze upon all we loved,

upon all that was bright, and pure, and beautiful, changing with a slow

but certain change to decay and corruption. The most careless cannot

move along the chamber of death without being affected by the awful

presence of the King of Terrors. The holy quiet that ought to

characterise a funeral procession is too frequently destroyed by the

empty pomp and heartlessness which attend it; but in the death-chamber

there is nothing of this; the very atmosphere seems impregnated with the

stillness of the time when there was no life in the broad earth, and

when only "God moved on the face of the waters." Our breath comes slowly

and heavily to our lips, and we murmur forth our words as if the spirit

watched to record them in the unchanging book of immortality.

In due time, the funeral train of Lady Cecil prepared to escort the

corpse to its final home. Sir Robert was too ill, and too deeply

afflicted to be present at the ceremony; and as he had no near relative,

Sir Willmott Burrell of Burrell, the knight to whom his daughter's hand

was plighted, was expected to take his station as chief mourner. The

people waited for some hours with untiring patience; the old steward

paced backwards and forwards from the great gate, and at last took his

stand there, looking out from between its bars, hoping that, wild and

reckless as Burrell really was, he would not put so great an affront

upon the Cecil family, as to suffer its late mistress to go thus

unhonoured to the grave.