CHAPTER XLII

She died in his arms. In the stillness they heard her name again and again softly spoken, as if he still would summon her from the apathy of death. They saw him, in their sobbing, wait undiscouraged for his answer from the lips that never would answer again.

If he had claimed her in her life he claimed her doubly in her death; now, at least, she was altogether his. He laid her tenderly upon the pillow and covering her hands, still clasping the crucifix, in his own hands he knelt with his face buried in the counterpane.

Day was breaking when he kissed her and rose to his feet. When Dolly went to him in the morning to learn his wishes she found him in his room. Alice was to lie, he said, with the Kimberlys on the hill, in the plot reserved for him. His sister assented tearfully. As to the funeral, he asked Dolly to confer with the village priest. He directed that only Annie and her own women should make Alice ready for the burial and forbade that any stranger's hand should touch his dead.

She lay in the sunshine, on her pillow, after Annie had dressed her hair, as if breathing. Kimberly went in when Annie came for him. He saw how the touch of the maid's loving hands had made for her dead mistress a counterfeit of sleep; how the calm of the great sleep had already come upon her, and how death, remembering the suffering of her womanhood, had restored to her face its girlish beauty. Hamilton, who was with him, followed him into the room. Kimberly broke the silence.

"What _is_ First Communion, Hamilton?" he asked.

Hamilton shook his head.

"I think," Kimberly said, pausing, "it must be the expression upon her face now."

During the day he hardly spoke. Much of the time he walked in the hall or upon the belvedere and his silence was respected. Those of his household asked one another in turn to talk with him. But even his kindness repelled communication.

In the early morning when the white couch had been placed to receive her for the grave he returned to the room with Dolly and they stood beside Alice together.

"This is my wedding day, Dolly. Did you remember it?"

"Robert!"

"I tried for once to do better; to treat Alice as a woman should be treated. This is my reward--my wedding day."

He lifted her in his arms like a child and as he laid her in her coffin looked at her stonily. "My bride! My Alice!"

Dolly burst into tears. The harshness of his despair gave way as he bent over her for the last time and when he spoke again the tenderness of his voice came back. "My darling! With you I bury every earthly hope; for I take God to witness, in you I have had all my earthly joy!" He walked away and never saw her face again.

The unintelligible service in the church did not rouse him from his torpor and he was only after a long time aware of a strange presence on the altar. Just at the last he looked up into the sanctuary. Little clouds of incense rising from a swinging thurible framed for an instant the face of a priest and Kimberly saw it was the archbishop.

The prelate stood before the tabernacle facing the little church filled with people. But his eyes were fixed on the catafalque and his lips were moving in prayer. Kimberly watched with a strange interest the slender, white hand rise in a benediction over the dead. He knew it was the last blessing of her whom he had loved.

Dolly had dreaded the scene at the grave but there was no scene. Nor could Kimberly ever recollect more than the mournful trees, the green turf, and the slow sinking of a flowered pall into the earth. And at the end he heard only the words of the archbishop, begging that they who remained might, with her, be one day received from the emptiness of this life into one that is both better and lasting.