CHAPTER X. THE BROTHER'S RETURN.
My soul is faint beneath its unshed tears;
The earth seems desolate amid its flowers;
Oh, better far wild hope and racking fears,
Than all this leaden weight of weary hours.
Miss Landon says, in one of her exquisite novels, that the history of a book—the feelings, sufferings, and experience of its author—would, if truly revealed, be often more touching, more romantic, and full of interest, than the book itself. Alas, alas, how true this is with me! How mournful would be the history of these pages, could I write of that solemn under-current of grief that has swept through my heart, while each word has fallen, as it were, mechanically from my pen. I have written in a dream; my mind has been at work while my soul dwelt wholly with another. Between every sentence fear, and grief, and keen anxiety have broken up, known only to myself, and leaving no imprint on the page which my hand was tracing. My brother, my noble young brother, so good, so strong, once so full of hopeful life! How many times have I said to my heart, as each chapter was commenced, Will he live to see the end? By his bedside I have written—with every sentence I have turned to see if he slept, or was in pain. We had began to count his life by months then, and as each period of mental toil came round, the wing of approaching death fell more darkly over my page and over my heart. Reader, do you know how we may live and suffer while the business of life goes regularly on, giving no token of the tears that are silently shed?
Here, here! between this chapter and the last he died. The flowers we laid upon his coffin are scarcely withered; the vibrations of the passing bell have but just swept through the beautiful valley where we laid him down to sleep. While I am yet standing bewildered and grief-stricken in "the valley and shadow of death,"—for we followed that loved one even to the brink of eternity, rendering him up to God when we might go no further,—even there comes this cry from the outer world, "Write—write!"
And I must write—my work, like his young life, must not be broken off in the middle. Here, in the desolate room, where he was an object of so much care, I must gather up the tangled thread of my story. There is nothing to interrupt me now—no faint moan, no gentle and patient call for water or for fruit. The couch is empty—the room silent; nothing is here to interrupt thought save the swell of my own heart—the flow of my own tears.
And she sat waiting for her brother, that kind-hearted old huckster-woman, waiting for him on that Thanksgiving night, with the beautiful faith which will not yield up hope even when everything that can reasonably inspire it has passed away.
The hired man had escorted the Irish girl on a visit to some "cousin from her own country," and Robert was acting as charioteer to the Warren family. Thus it happened that Mrs. Gray was left entirely alone in the old farm-house.