The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [301]
By this time Hetty’s sight had entirely failed her. Nevertheless, death approached with less than usual of its horrors, as if in tenderness to one of her half-endowed faculties. She was pale as a corpse, but her breathing was easy and unbroken, while her voice, though lowered almost to a whisper, remained clear and distinct. When her sister put this question, however, a blush diffused itself over the features of the dying girl; so faint, however, as to be nearly imperceptible ; resembling that hue of the rose which is thought to portray the tint of modesty, rather than the dye of the flower in its richer bloom. No one but Judith detected this expression of feeling, one of the gentle expressions of womanly sensibility, even in death. On her, however, it was not lost, nor did she conceal from herself the cause.
“Hurry is here, dearest Hetty,” whispered the sister, with her face so near the sufferer as to keep the words from other ears. “Shall I tell him to come and receive your good wishes?”
A gentle pressure of the hand answered in the affirmative, and then Hurry was brought to the side of the pallet. It is probable that this handsome but rude woodsman had never before found himself so awkwardly placed, though the inclination which Hetty felt for him (a sort of secret yielding to the instincts of nature, rather than any unbecoming impulse of an ill-regulated imagination), was too pure and unobtrusive to have created the slightest suspicion of the circumstance in his mind. He allowed Judith to put his hard, colossal hand between those of Hetty, and stood waiting the result in awkward silence.
“This is Hurry, dearest,” whispered Judith, bending over her sister, ashamed to utter the words so as to be audible to herself; “speak to him, and let him go.”
“What shall I say, Judith?”
“Nay, whatever your own pure spirit teaches, my love. Trust to that, and you need fear nothing.”
“Good-bye, Hurry,” murmured the girl, with a gentle pressure of his hand. “I wish you would try and be more like Deerslayer.”
These words were uttered with difficulty; a faint flush succeeded them for a single instant, then the hand was relinquished, and Hetty turned her face aside as if done with the world. The mysterious feeling that bound her to the young man, a sentiment so gentle, as to be almost imperceptible to herself, and which could never have existed at all, had her reason possessed more command over her senses, was forever lost in thoughts of a more elevated, though scarcely a purer character.
“Of what are you thinking, my sweet sister?” whispered Judith; “tell me, that I may aid you at this moment.”
“Mother—I see mother, now, and bright beings around her in the lake. Why isn’t father there? It’s odd that I can see mother when I can’t see you! Farewell, Judith.”
The last words were uttered after a pause, and her sister had hung over her some time, in anxious watchfulness, before she perceived that the gentle spirit had departed. Thus died Hetty Hutter, one of those mysterious links between the material and immaterial world, which, while they appear to be deprived of so much that is esteemed and necessary for this state of being, draw so near to, and offer so beautiful an illustration of the truth, purity, and simplicity of another.
CHAPTER XXXII
“A baron’s chylde to be begylde! it was a cursed dede;
To be felawe with an outlawe! Almighty God forbede!
Yea, better were, the poor squyère, alone to forest yede,
Than ye sholde say, another day, that by my cursed dede
Ye were betrayed: wherefore, good mayde, the best rede that I can
Is, that I to the grene wode go, alone, a banyshed man.”
Nutbrowne Mayde
THE DAY THAT FOLLOWED proved to be melancholy, though one of much activity. The soldiers, who had so lately been employed in interring their victims, were now called on to bury their own dead. The scene of the morning had left a saddened feeling on all the gentlemen of the party,