“Only the greyhound howling at the dead that he knows is lying over his head. Ah, ma’am! The poor brute sees what we can’t see, and his death-baying is awful.”
“Where is he? The sound seems to come through the floor.”
“He is so savage that I was afraid he would hurt some of the strangers who will come here to-day, so I chained him in 260 the basement. Hist, ma’am! Did you ever hear anything so dreadful? It raises the hair off my head.”
He went down stairs, and the howling, which was caused by the fact that the dog was hungry and unaccustomed to being chained, ceased as soon as he was set free. Ere long Robert came back, followed by the greyhound, whose collar he grasped firmly. At sight of Salome he growled and plunged towards her, but Robert was on the alert, and held him down. Leading him to the parlor door, the gardener knocked, and put his mouth to the key-hole.
“If you please, ma’am, will you let Greyhound in? It won’t do to leave him at large, and when I chain him he almost lifts the roof with his howls.”
No reply reached Salome’s strained ears, but the door was opened sufficiently to admit the dog, who eagerly bounded in, and then the click of the lock once more barred intrusion; and when the joyful barking had ceased, all grew silent once more.
From a basket of fresh flowers brought in by the boy who assisted Robert, Salome selected the white ones and made a wreath, which she laid aside and sprinkled; then gathering some rose and nutmeg geranium-leaves, and a few violets blooming in jars that stood on the gallery, she cautiously glided into the chamber of death, and arranged them in Elsie’s rigid hands.
Soon after, the undertaker and minister arrived, and while they conferred with Robert concerning the burial service, the girl went back to her vigil before the parlor door, and endeavored to divert her thoughts by looking into a volume of poems that lay on the hall table. The book opened at “Macromicros,” where a brilliant verbena was crushed between the leaves, and delicate undulating pencil-lines enclosed the passage beginning,—
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“O woman, woman, with face so pale! Pale woman, weaving away A frustrate life at a lifeless loom.” |
Slowly the hours wore away, and at noon Elsie’s body was 261 placed in the coffin and left on a table in the room opposite the parlor.