There I roamed and wandered, straining my thoughts, fixing them upon you—yearning, longing for you. The moonlight streamed calmly down; the dark night sky was clear and peaceful; the pines stood solemn and still, like giant, black-clad sentinels guarding your grave. But you—oh, father, father!—you were not.
Now and then an owl hooted, or one of those screeching night-birds flew out of covert. But these natural noises only deepened the stern silence of the sleeping world. My wretched body, my miserable senses, were the barrier between us. Embodied, we shall never meet again. Oh, father! that thought maddened me; I could not bear the separation any longer.
I looked up. (Why do we always look up?) That cold, solitary eye of the night—the moon—glared banefully at me. To me its chill disdain meant: “Fool, why stand there drivelling? If you will have him again, die.”
The thought steadied me. I would die. Yes; but how, when?
Those poor Mervyns! A rush of pity for dear, good Mammy and her worthy husband made me turn away from the idea, wrung with pain. They had been so tender and good to me always. What a repayment—to grieve their kind hearts!
Overcome, I made my way to the triangle-lawn, and sat down in a corner of the stone bench under the laurels to collect my thoughts. Then came the most startling event of my whole life.
I had hardly been there a minute, when a figure glided in by the path through the shrubs by which I had come—the figure of a man.
It stood motionless in the shadow. At first, with a throb of triumph, I thought it was you. I was springing up to rush to you when it made a step forward. I saw a white face in the moonlight: the face of a thin man with grey hair, all tossed about above his forehead—a face I seemed to know, but did not know.
(This I declare to you that I saw, with these living eyes, and never, never will I believe that I was deceived. Never!)
At first I shivered—yes, with fright. I was afraid of that man, whose face was familiar and strange at one and the same time.