He would have no woman about the house now; he would do everything for himself—so that he was alone,—always alone, for never a neighbour was admitted even if one dared to intrude,—and for the most part they all let him be. The hollyhocks still stood tall and quiet, with their black and crimson tufts against the grey stone of his outer wall, and the sunflowers bowed heavy heads to the setting sun where the white lilies had bloomed against its rising one day in summer.
He sat there every evening and remembered it, but one evening in particular he wished the autumn flowers away more regretfully than usual, and wondered what he would do if the June lilies were blooming there once more, and he had that to fight and that to do again which he had fought and had done that day.
He always thanked his God who had numbed his arm and his senses—thanked Him whenever the memory of that one moment forced itself upon him: the only moment of all the bad moments when his hate had taken strange shape against her: the awful moment when her innocent face upon the pillow had been the face of the false comrade who had robbed him, and when the dawn had swum red in his sight.
He thanked Him for the dew of that summer morning that had cooled his rage and taught him, at least, to wait; but of late when he thought of it and brooded on his grief, another sense but that of mere selfish regret at his loss mingled with his weight of weary loneliness: the sense of her loss, the realization of what the neighbours had remembered but he had forgotten till now, that it “weren’t ’er fault,” and that it did seem “rough on a child.”
Rough on a child! A child! A creature who had not desired to come into this world—who would have, sure enough, to fight its cruel thrusts in later life, but who might have a few years of complete happiness—of time in which to grow strong and beautiful and valiant.
To whom could this child look to give her these short years of happiness that were hers by right?
He looked around him on the village children, who had once been her comrades: they were sick sometimes, they were sometimes hungry, they were often cuffed and scolded in the haste of a moment’s vexation, but they were all of them beloved. There was always some one to pick them up where they fell, to comfort them when they suffered, to bid them play and be glad.
Who was there to comfort this motherless child now that he had forsaken her?
He paid that she should be fed—that she should be clothed; but who pitied her in her childish troubles, who heard her prayers and gave her her morning and evening kiss,—who loved her?
And yet she, whom he had doated on and spoiled to his heart’s delight, was she not likely to crave love more than any of them?