We took two rails from a neighboring fence, and formed a bier by laying
across some boards from the bottom of the boat. And thus we bore
Zenobia homeward. Six hours before, how beautiful! At midnight, what
a horror! A reflection occurs to me that will show ludicrously, I
doubt not, on my page, but must come in for its sterling truth. Being
the woman that she was, could Zenobia have foreseen all these ugly
circumstances of death,--how ill it would become her, the altogether
unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old Silas
Foster's efforts to improve the matter,--she would no more have
committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public
assembly in a badly fitting garment! Zenobia, I have often thought,
was not quite simple in her death. She had seen pictures, I suppose,
of drowned persons in lithe and graceful attitudes. And she deemed it
well and decorous to die as so many village maidens have, wronged in
their first love, and seeking peace in the bosom of the old familiar
stream,--so familiar that they could not dread it,--where, in
childhood, they used to bathe their little feet, wading mid-leg deep,
unmindful of wet skirts. But in Zenobia's case there was some tint of
the Arcadian affectation that had been visible enough in all our lives
for a few months past.
This, however, to my conception, takes nothing from the tragedy. For,
has not the world come to an awfully sophisticated pass, when, after a
certain degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot even put ourselves to
death in whole-hearted simplicity? Slowly, slowly, with many a dreary
pause,--resting the bier often on some rock or balancing it across a
mossy log, to take fresh hold,--we bore our burden onward through the
moonlight, and at last laid Zenobia on the floor of the old farmhouse.
By and by came three or four withered women and stood whispering around
the corpse, peering at it through their spectacles, holding up their
skinny hands, shaking their night-capped heads, and taking counsel of
one another's experience what was to be done.
With those tire-women we left Zenobia.