Chapter 8

"There have been sweet singing voices
In your walks that now are still;
There are seats left void, in your earthly homes,
Which none again may fill."

Mrs. Hemans.

I never saw the body of my sister, after I handed it, resembling a
sleeping infant, to the arms of Lucy. There is a sort of mania in some, a
morbid curiosity, to gaze on the features of the dead; but, with me, it
has ever been the reverse. I had been taken to the family room to
contemplate and weep over the faces of both my parents, but this was at an
age when it became me to be passive. I was now at a time of life when I
might be permitted to judge for myself; and, as soon as I began to think
at all on the subject, which was not for some hours, however, I resolved
that the last look of love, the sweet countenance, sinking in death it is
true, but still animate and beaming with the sentiments of her pure heart,
should be the abiding impression of my sister's form. I have cherished it
ever since, and often have I rejoiced that I did not permit any subsequent
images of a corpse to supplant it. As respects both my parents, the images
left on my mind, for years and years, was painful rather than pleasing.

Grace's body was no sooner out of my arms, I had scarcely imprinted the
last long kiss on the ivory-like but still warm forehead, than I left the
house. Clawbonny had no impertinent eyes to drive a mourner to his closet,
and I felt as if it were impossible to breathe unless I could obtain the
freedom of the open air. As I crossed the little lawn, the wails from the
kitchens reached me. Now that the invalid could no longer be disturbed by
their lamentations, the unsophisticated negroes gave vent to their
feelings without reserve. I heard their outcries long after every other
sound from the house was lost on my ear.

I held my way along the road, with no other view but to escape from the
scene I had just quitted, and entered the very little wood which might be
said to have been the last object of the external world that had attracted
my sister's attention. Here everything reminded me of the past; of the
days of childhood and youth; of the manner in which the four Clawbonny
children had lived together, and roamed these very thickets, in confidence
and love. I sat in that wood an hour; a strange, unearthly hour it seemed
to me! I saw Grace's angel countenance imprinted on the leaves, heard her
low but gay laugh, as she was wont to let it be heard in the hours of
happiness, and the tones of her gentle voice sounded in my ears almost as
familiarly as in life. Rupert and Lucy were there too. I saw them, heard
them, and tried to enter into their innocent merriment, as I had done of
old; but fearful glimpses of the sad truth would