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Updated: May 28, 2025
"See here," and laying her cheek against the pallid brow of her dead benefactor, she kissed the clay-cold lips softly, wildly, agonizedly, then, leaping to her feet, cried, in a subdued but thrilling tone: "Could I do that if I were guilty? Would not the breath freeze on my lips, the blood congeal in my veins, and my heart faint at this contact?
Who can paint the mortal agony with which his soul followed, like a vigilant eye, these effigies of clay-cold soldiers, and examined them, one after the other, to see if Raoul slept among them? Who can express the intoxication of joy with which Athos bowed before God, and thanked Him for not having seen him he sought with so much fear among the dead?
What other man had Richard of York taken so dearly to his heart, to what other man had the august father said, "Protect my sons"? Before him seemed literally to rise the phantom of that honoured prince, and with clay-cold lips to ask, "Art thou, of all the world, the doomsman of my first-born?"
His wife was with him, and a surgeon, who had found the ball but could not stop the hemorrhage. A little girl sat on the bed, and every now and then put forth a hand and timidly stroked her father's clay-cold wrist. On the floor, on a mattress matching the one on which the boy lay, was stretched a gaunt giant from some backwoods or mountain clearing.
There was not a servant in the house who would lean from the casement without expecting the touch of a clay-cold finger on her shoulder. Any whose business brought them to the attic looked in the corners warily, while they stayed, but the servants did not like to go there alone.
The first thing she did was to disappoint her friends, and shock the decencies of Hendrik; for it had been agreed on all sides that "the poor dear thing would take on dreadfully, or else fret herself into fits, or perhaps fall into one of them clay-cold, corpsy swoons, like old Miss Dunks has regular every 'revival." But when they came, with all their tedious commonplaces of a stupid condolence not wholly innocent of curiosity, Sally thanked them with dry eyes and prudent lips and quiet nerves, and only said she thought she should do very well after she had set the house to rights and slept awhile.
"She will perhaps forgive me if I confess it to her over Miss Margaret's coffin," she thought; and once when they stood together by the sleeping dead, and Madam Conway, with Maggie in her arms, was bidding the child kiss the clay-cold lips of its mother, old Hagar attempted to tell her.
This image of wax or clay-cold reality, whichever it might be, lay on a slightly elevated bier, with three tall candles burning on each side, another tall candle at the head, and another at the foot. There was music, too; in harmony with so funereal a spectacle.
Alas! he is dead; he sleeps; he cannot hear! Then they turn again to tears and curses, feeling that no help or comfort can come from the clay-cold form. The intensity of grief finds strange language for its utterance. A girl, mourning over her father, cries: 'Mi l'hannu crucifissatu Cume Ghiesu Cristu in croce. Once only, in Viale's collection, does any friend of the dead remember mercy.
"Comforubble as a man can be that canna feel," the other grunted. "My back's bruk. I'm dyin uppuds." Stealthily the boy took the old man's hand in his. A faint tightening of the clay-cold fingers surprised him. The dusk was falling fast. At their feet the sea still crashed uneasily. Above them the cliff showed white. Under the moon one red star sparkled.
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